Some firms say no to drug screening

By Maria M. Perotin
Knight Ridder News Service

They are the staples of a modern-day job search: a polished résumé, glowing references and a clean urine sample.

Without fulfilling that last criterion for a satisfactory drug screen, applicants at many U.S. companies can forget about employment.

In the almost two decades since the federal government launched its "drug-free workplace" promotions, tests for illicit drugs have become standard for thousands of employers. The tests have been credited with everything from higher productivity to decreased worker compensation claims. Tests are given to 25 million people annually, with an additional 25 million workers subject to screening.

But as thousands of displaced workers hunt for jobs in the economic slump and hiring has slowed, the $737 million drug-testing industry's expansion in workplaces has slowed accordingly.

And some employers are also less willing to spend money for drug testing if they do not believe that it contributes to the bottom line.

Growth of the drug-testing industry, which averaged more than 12.5 percent annually during the 1990s, has tapered off to only about 1 percent a year.

Laboratories also struggle to provide accurate testing results despite "counterproducts" — the array of additives, cleansers and gizmos, readily available on the Internet, that employees can utilize to circumvent a positive drug test. Critics question whether businesses reap tangible benefits from the urine-in-a-cup routine.

Workplace drug tests — primarily of job applicants, but also of employees, in some cases — took off during the "just say no" era of the 1980s, with heavy promotion by the federal government. They typically detect opiates, cocaine derivatives, barbiturates, methamphetamine and marijuana, revealing drug use from several days or perhaps even months earlier.

Sixty-one percent of companies screen job applicants, and 50 percent test their employees, according to the American Management Association's most recent survey in 2001. That is down from the 1996 peak, when 68 percent of employers screened candidates.

Meldron Young, the association's human resources practice consultant, said drug tests remain a standard element of most employers' hiring procedures.

But the weak economy has prompted businesses to review spending, and some have eliminated drug screens for employees whose duties do not pose safety risks.

"They probably won't waste their money trying to do it," Young said. "You have people that are moving into the upper echelons of corporate America now that kind of take the stance that if it's not affecting the person's performance, it's not an issue."

Joseph Halligan, chief executive of Haltom City, Texas-based PharmChem, linked the downturn in testing, at least in part, to the current hiring slump.

"If you think about the amount of hiring being done at the moment, needless to say, that segment of the business is down," Halligan said.

Halligan, whose company offers a variety of testing products but specializes in urine tests, said that some clients have also scaled back their testing efforts.

Businesses that used to screen applicants for positions at all levels may now limit the tests only to candidates for certain jobs, he said.

"I think there are a number of companies that have looked at the cost side of this thing and said, 'Do we need to do all of this drug testing?' " Halligan said. "The end result is they're not spending the dollars."

Focus on bottom line

Although the notion that drug users make for bad employees has a commonsense appeal, Young said companies generally have not quantified the before-and-after results of their anti-drug campaigns.

Without evidence of drug testing's advantages to their own operations, some managers are less willing than they used to be to spend roughly $30 apiece to test applicants and employees, he said.

"Employers right now are so in survival mode," Young said. "It doesn't contribute to the bottom line right now."

That outlook troubles Becky Vance, executive director of Drug Free Business Houston.

"In leaner economies, corporations tend to cut back a little bit," she said. "It's scary when you think about what that might cost. You can't afford not to do it, really."

Vance's organization encourages Texas companies to test all job applicants and to randomly screen employees. Drug users are less able to function at work, she says, and they take more days off and have higher healthcare bills.

"Being a former drug user in the workplace, I know that it has an adverse effect," Vance said. "And I know that drug users don't leave their drugs at home when they show up for work."

Vance, who gave up cocaine about 15 years ago, said employers' anti-drug campaigns can be a formidable deterrent to drug use.

"You can do it in the schools. You can do it in the churches," she said. "You need to do it in the workplaces, because that's where the people are."

Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the NORML Foundation, a research organization that supports marijuana legalization, has a different perspective.

He believes that employers have good reason to be concerned about workers who are high on the job. But urine tests are far more likely to nab employees who use drugs at a Saturday night party than those who are impaired during their work hours, he said.

And he believes that drug-testing policies are aimed more at morality than productivity.

"It's certainly not about public safety. And it can't be about building a better relationship between employees," he said. "This is about trying to find out if somebody is breaking the law and then holding them accountable for it."

St. Pierre will not get much argument from Vance, who said that smart businesses use pre-employment tests to keep drug users off their payrolls.

"You don't want to hire them on, so you will screen them out," Vance said. "Those aren't the most stellar members of the community, and employers have a right to mandate that people who work for them don't break the law."

Council's comparison

Advocates of workplace drug testing cite a number of bottom-line benefits to employers who ferret out drug users. But opponents cite their own statistics to argue to businesses that drug screens are a waste of money.

According to the American Council for Drug Education, substance abusers, when compared to nonabusers, are:

• 10 times more likely to miss work.
• 3.6 times more likely to be involved in on-the-job accidents.
• Five times more likely to file a workers compensation claim.
• 33 percent less productive.
• Responsible for healthcare costs that are three times as high.

Some opponents of blanket testing question the accuracy of that data, and they note that many of those abusers are consuming alcohol — not marijuana or any other illegal drug.

The American Civil Liberties Union, in a 1999 report, argued that drug-testing programs are not cost-effective — costing industries millions of dollars a year to nab the small percentage of workers who use drugs.

The ACLU said that the federal government spent $11.7 million to test nearly 29,000 workers in 1990. Only 153 employees flunked, putting the cost of finding each user at $77,000, according to the ACLU.

Citing several academic and other studies, the ACLU claims that drug users are not any more likely than their nonuser counterparts to have workplace accidents.

The organization concedes that frequent users of hard drugs, including heroin and crack cocaine, are unlikely to be reliable workers. But the report notes that the majority of those who use illicit drugs are actually occasional users who never go beyond marijuana.

On the flip side, a 2000 study of drug testing in the construction industry, conducted by Cornell University, concluded that companies that tested employees lowered their injury rates more than their counterparts that did not test.

The Labor Department cites a study conducted by the U.S. Postal Service, which revealed that employees who tested positive in pre-employment drug tests were 66 percent more likely to be absent and 77 percent more likely to be discharged within three years than those who came up clean.

Job hunter Marie Kemins said she understands the motive to identify drug users.

Kemins, a resident of Southlake, Texas, was taken aback by her first pre-employment drug screen in 1996, but says that she now accepts the tests as routine.

"I always thought it was a positive thing," she said. "I work hard, and I know people who can hide trouble."

Kemins, who is searching for a sales job, recalled a colleague at a Washington electronics company whose impressive credentials were not enough to counter a nasty drug habit.

"After about a month, he started showing up late and not pulling his weight," she said. "Finally, I guess he went on a binge. We were told he went back to Philadelphia and was in a crack house."

The experience convinced Kemins that seemingly "normal" people with harmful drug addictions can be destructive to their employers.

"I guess it could be anyone," Kemins said.

"That's why when the drug-testing situation came up years later, I was fine with it."