Workplace alcohol-testing programs: prevalence and trends

Since the beginning of the industrial era, employers have been concerned about the costs and consequences of inappropriate alcohol consumption by workers on and off the job. “By far the most common of the drugs that can affect work performance is ethanol (alcoholic beverages),” according to the Institute of Medicine. Many studies have shown that both heavy drinking over time and the misuse of alcohol in safety-sensitive situations have had significant negative effects on worker productivity and health, and on employer costs and profits. As a consequence, several strategies have emerged to control this behavior. Modern interventions include occupational alcoholism programs and their successors; employee assistance programs, health promotion programs, and education and training efforts. In the 1980s, impairment testing programs also became a popular workplace method to address substance misuse. Testing programs are primarily intended to detect the use of illicit drugs, but also are used in many worksites to detect inappropriate ethanol use among employees. This article describes the prevalence and characteristics of alcohol-testing programs in U.S. worksites. The data are derived from two national prevalence surveys of worksites. These surveys were conducted in 1993 and 1995 with support from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. We present national prevalence estimates of alcoholtesting programs for job applicants and current employees. Prevalence is presented by worksite size (number of employees), type of industry, and census region. For programs that test current employees, these estimates are given for both 1993 and 1995. We then compare the prevalence of alcoholand drug-testing programs for applicants and current employees in 1995. We also describe employee and worksite characteristics by alcohol-testing prevalence at the worksite. Finally, we present alcohol-testing prevalence by type of testing program, testing method, and organizational unit responsible for testing. (For a description of the methodology, see appendix.)