
Workplace drug testing is widespread but ineffective - drewrv
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/cover_story/2015/12/workplace_drug_testing_is_widespread_but_ineffective.single.html
======
grahamburger
At a job a few years back I was the manager of a small field maintenance crew.
We were tasked with maintaining wireless equipment (antennas on towers and
commercials buildings) for about 10,000 customers. Our company had been
purchased recently and the policy of the new owners was that any time anyone
was in any kind of 'incident' in a company vehicle, every employee in the
vehicle had to be picked up by their manager, driven to the drug testing
facility, tested, and driven home to their doorstep and then couldn't return
to work until the test came back, sometimes several days later.

The last winter I was there we got hit with a major snowstorm. One of our
towers on the top of a mountain was having problems, causing service
interruptions for about 7,000 customers. Our safety policy mandated at least
two technicians at a job like this, and one of my 3 technicians was out of
town. I took one of the others with me and headed for the tower, which was
about 2 miles up a dirt road that was now covered in about 2 feet of snow.
Right after pulling on to the road, the company truck brushed up against a
fence post that I didn't see because it had fallen over and was buried in the
snow. The post left a scratch in one of the body panels of the truck that
would have to be repaired. There was no way I'd be able to get it repaired
without being asked about the drug test.

I called my manager and he made a few calls hoping we could get an exception
to the drug test rule this time around. No luck. This was right around the
time of the holidays - maybe even New Years Eve, if I remember correctly. The
only drug testing center open was about an hour drive from where we were, in
the opposite direction of where we lived. My manager had to come pick us up,
take us to the center, drive us home, then go pick up my last remaining
technician, drive back to the tower, drive up to the tower (by this time it
was dark), and then start troubleshooting the problem. Turned a 90 minute
outage in to a 6 hour outage. Then of course it took several days for the drug
tests to come back, so my manager and one remaining technician had to deal
with all of the aftermath of the storm in the same way.

I'll bet this one incident offset any positive outcomes that company has seen
from drug testing, if indeed there have been any.

~~~
rdtsc
I think it was Slavoj Žižek who said one of the best way to fight back against
stupid bureaucracy is to start following its rules as precisely as possible.

~~~
calibraxis
If anyone wants to learn more about this strategy (sabotage by rule-
following), it's called "work to rule".
([http://www.spunk.org/texts/intro/practice/sp001703.html](http://www.spunk.org/texts/intro/practice/sp001703.html))

------
S_A_P
I work in consulting in the oil and gas industry. Many E&P companies are
struggling right now with crude in the $30-40/bbl range. The E&P I work for
has reduced staff 4 times this year officially. Unofficially they've had 6
"random" drug tests in the past 8 months. That is a way to reduce payroll
without having to do a press release stating you've dropped 26% of your
workforce.

------
brazzledazzle
Corporate culture is intrinsically tied to risk adversity and the reason it's
allowed to spiral out of control is because of costs that are difficult or
impossible to measure. If you can point to a risk and a cost associated with
it while the detractors speak to morale or other intangibles you're going to
win out in almost any big company. Is a drug testing policy going to keep you
from hiring amazing employees? Quite possibly (the particulars of your
industry and geographical area apply). But how do you measure that? No one is
going to say "I didn't apply/take the job because I smoke marijuana on the
weekends." Big companies miss out on opportunities and innovation because they
allow risk adversity to take over their culture.

~~~
dragonwriter
But what you describe isn't being risk-averse, its just prioritizing the
obvious and easy-to-quantify risks (and ignoring other risks, including the
higher-order risk of not conducting research to quantify the easy-to-identify-
but-hard-to-quantify risks.)

But being willfully blind to broad categories of risk isn't being risk-averse.

~~~
brazzledazzle
Sure, but it is a symptom of a risk adverse culture. Risk adverse corporate
cultures that pursue data that is difficult to quantify aren't exactly the
norm. If your company culture values risk adversity why would you take the
risk of measuring anything but the obvious? You might if you're that type of
person, but risk adverse cultures select against risk takers.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Sure, but it is a symptom of a risk adverse culture.

If there is aversion to risk involvedon, its not the _company_ being risk-
averse, its the individuals being risk-averse, and the culture having
demonstrated that failing to address quantified risks to the company (but
_not_ failing to quantify and then, if appropriate, address identified-but-
difficult-to-quantify risks to the company) will lead to negative _personal_
consequences.

But its not so much the aversion to risk that is the issue here so much as the
particular personal risk profile in those environments. An environment with
the same cultural degree of aversion to risk, but different personal risk
profiles, would produce different outcomes.

> If your company culture values risk adversity why would you take the risk of
> measuring anything but the obvious?

Because the lack of knowledge about a risk (especially one that is identified
and qualitatively characterized, but not quantified) is _itself_ a risk, and
if your company really values risk avoidance, than identifying and quantifying
risks (and not just addressing the easily identified and quantified risks
while ignoring the easily-identified-but-hard-to-quantify ones and the hard-
to-identify ones) would be valued and rewarded.

~~~
brazzledazzle
>If there is aversion to risk involvedon, its not the company being risk-
averse, its the individuals being risk-averse

So would you be happy if instead of "risk averse company culture" I said
"pervasive personal risk aversion driven by a company culture designed to
punish failure and reward safe decision making"?

------
guard-of-terra
More thoughts on the matter.

I have relatively high income, I come from affluent family, I have some
savings, I'm kind of well-off, I have no troubles finding jobs.

This means I can quit a job over drug testing. A lot of people can't - they
have mouths to feed, no savings to cover it up, not too desirable on job
market.

This means I have an _obligation_ to abruptly terminate my employment in such
situation. This will make employers consider drug testing policies against
losing people like me. Which makes world less bad for everyone, even people
who could not just quit.

This is where middle-class privilege comes in handy to shield us all.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
I am downvoting you not because of your logic, which is sound, but your tone,
which comes across as superior and smug, even if you are acknowledging the
disadvantages of those who do not possess what you call "privilege." I am
doing so because a less discerning reader may judge you own your tone alone
and disregard your logic entirely, rendering your argument moot. You have made
your point, but in an ineffective way.

~~~
mikestew
And I'm down voting _you_ just because. Parent was not inflammatory, wasn't
name-calling, and gave a well-reasoned argument that made me think about _my_
privilege and obligations that might go along with it. Are you saying that
this kind of post is what you want to see less of on HN?

------
VLM
Also a socio-economic level of agency filter effect. At least a couple percent
of test results are false positives. Combine those two and you filter out
poorer applicants and lower level, lower income employees. If you need to
downsize 5% you can start with drug testing everyone and even if no one uses
drugs the high false positive rate will get rid of some employees, now you
only have to downsize 2% or something. This also works to reduce spend on
welfare type programs and unemployment.

~~~
such_a_casual
I honestly don't think people realize just how often these tests result in
false positives until it happens to them. The only drug test I've ever taken
came back positive for meth. XD In addition, people are mislead by % points.
Even if only 2% of drug tests come back as false positives, when you multiply
that across millions of people and when you have those same people take
multiple tests a year... well that's a lot of people getting slapped around by
faulty testing.

~~~
GoodOldNe
An excellent report on this subject:
[http://www.cacj.org/documents/sf_crime_lab/studies__misc_mat...](http://www.cacj.org/documents/sf_crime_lab/studies__misc_materials/falsepositives.pdf)

More people should know this. There is a great piece in the Washington Post
today about how a false positive result from tea bags left in the trash (which
was being sifted through by Sheriff's Deputies after they saw a homeowner
shopping at a gardening store, giving them what apparently passes for PC these
days) led to a no-knock raid with a SWAT team holding a middle-aged couple
that doesn't use drugs at gunpoint for an afternoon.

------
kartan
I can confirm. From outside the USA it looks extremely weird. But, you know,
we do things that are weird for you.

For me the most ironic part is that by this rules you maybe will fire a really
good worker that tried drugs. Why do you want to fire a good worker that
doesn't causes any trouble?

Maybe makes sense for people, for example, that uses firearms at work. But it
will not make sense if it is not complemented with some kind of mental health
care.

Really, I see it as really really weird. I see that the journalist also sees
it that way. But on the comments looks like it is not so much.

Is it really so usual to do this? Isn't this seen as an invasion of personal
privacy?

------
onetwotree
A few thoughts.

Drug testing is a great way for an employer to get rid of someone when they
have no cause to fire them. For example, a friend of mine had a job throwing
luggage at the airport. They had a policy that allowed them to arbitrarily
drug test people, but they never did, so my friend figured smoking a little
weed now and then would be OK. Then one day, he hurts his back. He goes in to
fill out the forms for workman's comp, and guess what the first thing they ask
him to do is? You can't fire someone for getting hurt, but you can for
flunking a drug test!

Drug testing is not an effective way to determine whether someone is using
drugs. I live in a self-run sober living house, specifically an Oxford House.
We do random drug tests now and then, but it's really just to deter "I bet I
can get away with..." thinking, and we rarely catch anyone using like that.
The reason we never catch people with randoms is twofold - drug tests are
stupid easy to beat (and most addicts know how), and we catch people relapsing
because when addicts relapse, it's really an all or nothing thing. People will
think they can smoke a joint at a concert (because their problem is booze, not
weed!), but invariably they come staggering in drunk out of their mind within
a week.

I believe employer drug testing is harmful and invasive[1]. What employees do
on their own time is their business. If someone has a problem with drugs or
alcohol that effects their work, that will become obvious and HR can either
fire them or, and this is what's been done with me in the past, force them to
go to treatment. This means that even though I get drug tested regularly where
I live, I will straight up refuse to work for a company that drug tests any of
it's employees (again [1]).

[1] There are some jobs where a person being intoxicated on the job would put
lives or property at risk. In this case, drug and alcohol testing seems
acceptable. Of course, with alcohol testing, one wonders why employers don't
use the readily available UA's and mouth swabs to test for alcohol use in the
past few days...social acceptability is a big deal.

------
ErikAugust
Part of drug testing is to create another way to terminate employment.

In some situations, it is rather difficult to terminate an employment. It
gives employer's another out.

~~~
x1798DE
At a place I used to work they did random drug testing, and the only time I
saw it happen was right at the beginning of a new year, my boss had one guy
tested: the 100% straight-laced Asian Christian teetotaler. Maybe it was
actually totally random (I highly doubt any of us used any kind of drugs), but
I always figured his boss said, "you have to randomly drug test someone", and
he didn't want to lose any of us so he picked the sure thing.

------
analog31
Consider the following, which is adapted from Pascal's Wager:

Let's say it costs $50k to replace a bad employee, and the drug test costs
$50. Then the test only has to screen out one bad employee per thousand to pay
for itself. It's inconceivable that the test is less effective than that, so
by definition, it pays for itself.

I suspect that similar logic -- paying an small cost to ward off an
incalculable threat -- is behind a lot of irrational HR behavior.

~~~
hobs
No HR employee has ever gotten paid for cost savings, just for ass covering.

A drug test is simply a checkbox that allows them to have even less
responsibility for the person that they hired being at all capable at the job.
(one of thousands)

------
golergka
Is it happening in states where weed is legal, too? I can't understand it.

My last workspace looked literally like these illustrations: a lot of folks
smoking weed right in the office (open-air balcony), without any secrecy at
all. And it's not even legal, although cops don't really care to enforce.

To drug test for a legal substance... Why would you agree to work at such a
place?

~~~
Wingman4l7
Well, I can give you an anecdata point of one -- no. I know someone who
recently got hired into a tech consulting position in Washington state, and
there was no drug test.

------
frankydp
Disregarding the Drug Free Workplace act.

Drug testing is a test for the risk tolerance of the employee. This forum may
encourage a community of very risk tolerant people, which is evident from the
other comments in the thread, but the level of risk tolerance that a person
must have to actively use illegal drugs is a pretty strong statement of that
persons risk decisions. Anyone's individual opinion on the legality of drugs
is irrelevant in this situation, as the judgement call is based on the risk
and reward decision regarding something that can cost someone that is caught
and prosecuted thousands of dollars, jail time, and a record for something
entertainment related. Obvious exceptions for this would be legalized states
and medical use.

So if you consider what jobs have high cost outcomes for risky behavior, it
will probably align pretty closely with high drug test rates. Some of those
would be food service, industrial, transportation, medical, and construction
which makes up around 30% of the workforce, and the other 20% is probably
covered by governments both state and federal along with their contractors.

~~~
brazzledazzle
>Obvious exceptions for this would be legalized states and medical use.

If we're talking about marijuana another exception is states where it's
decriminalized. If you're passing on a fantastic candidate in California
because they tested positive for marijuana you are arguably insane. Possession
of marijuana under an ounce is a violation (ticket) that doesn't require a
court appearance or a criminal record (similar to a traffic violation).

~~~
spinlock
I don't think that's how it works. Companies with drug testing policies are
usually multi-state and they won't have a separate policy for NY and CA.

~~~
ConroyBumpus
Actually, they do. I have seen organizations with separate HR policies, by
state, to comply with the variances unique to each state (which is why
employees in one state were subject to random testing, and the other only "for
cause".)

------
pc86
> _As was the case 30 years ago, testing has no solid base of evidence, no
> proof that it succeeds. We don’t know if screening workers for recent drug
> use makes them more productive, lowers their risk of getting into accidents,
> or otherwise helps maintain the social order._

I've never heard anyone suggest that is does. The reasons in favor of drug
testing I've always heard is that you don't end up hiring people who are so
incompetent as to be doing drugs while applying for new jobs. It's just one
more piece of signalling.

I was drug-tested when I accepted employment at my current job. I had 3 or 4
days to make it in. Even if I was the type of person to regularly consume
illegal drugs, I certainly would not have done so while applying for work.

I don't think it does much good, it's probably a waste of money, and I don't
care what my coworkers smoke as long they're not doing it at work, but I also
don't see how anyone can be incredulous or indignant about it.

~~~
guard-of-terra
I can. The idea is extremely humiliating.

My body is my business. You don't get to poke in it just because you want to.

I would probably avoid employment where I would be expected to contribute not
just code but also pee.

P. S. I nearly don't drink[1], I don't smoke, I don't do drugs. Because _I
choose so_.

~~~
mod
You're not really the class of employee that these policies are (or should be,
at least) targeted at.

I had to take a piss test to get a job where I drove a company box truck on a
route every day, with a hazardous material endorsement. I was fresh out of
high school, no other qualifications. I didn't then, nor do I now, have a
problem with that piss test.

I'm a programmer now. I'd have a problem with a piss test--which I would
readily pass, even if it were effective.

~~~
guard-of-terra
Yesterday, journalists weren't the class of employee that these policies are
targeted at, but today they became so.

If this shit becomes the default (megacorp drones will think: why not extend
this inexpensive procedure to everyony) we'll just live in even worse and more
humiliating society than we do already.

You think, therefore you resist.

~~~
kelukelugames
One journalist at an unnamed "national" magazine was drug tested. The author
then makes a joke out of it. The story was a set up for the rest of the
article. Worrying it's becoming the default is just irrational as outrage over
Starbucks' war on Christmas.

 _Let me put this out there now, before you’ve read too far: I was not myself
drug-tested before publishing this story. Neither was my editor, nor the copy
editor, nor any of the designers, programmers, or art editors who worked on
it. For all I know, the lot of them—the entire staff of Slate—could be huddled
in a conference room right this very minute, passing joints around and
shooting dope and snorting PCP. But ours is not the standard workplace in
America._

