January 1998

Would you pass the drugs test?

At the same time, sales in the US of home-testing kits, such as saliva test Parents Alert Inc and Drug Alert, which is used to wipe surfaces and can be tested for drug residue, have rocketed as petrified parents snoop on their offspring. At least one US lab is understood to be courting two British supermarket chains with similar products. Drug wipes are already available in the UK from specialist outlets such as Spymaster. All but the loopiest observers will recognise the need for random drug testing in 'safety critical' industries. Pilled-up pilots, tripped-out train drivers and strung-out surgeons are all an obvious danger. As a spokesman for the Ministry Of Defence puts it: "We can't faff about - we're using lethal weapons." But drug testing for purely economic reasons is another matter entirely. The Drugs And The Workplace initiative, a resource centre for businesses, maintains that drug users are five times more likely than non-users to file a compensation claim. And recent British statistics estimate that employers lose £800 million a year because of staff drug abuse. Such figures are hotly disputed. Many observers argue that they ignore other factors - stress, personal problems or poor safety measures, for example. Though US campaign group NORML's argument that dope smokers work harder to earn extra money to buy dope is best saved for late-night bollocks-talking, rather than your next human resources conference. Unless Cheech and Chong are running it.

Anecdotal evidence to support the idea that Britain's workers are snortin' and cavortin' all over the shop is hardly overwhelming. There are 'drugs at work' stories that make the headlines, such as writer Will Self being caught taking heroin on John Major's private plane during the last election, or the Charlton Athletic footballers who tested positive for a variety of drugs in 1996. But these are far from being shop floor exposés. And, although the broadsheets seem intent on portraying drug use as endemic in the Army - there was a particularly good Sunday Times report about a hallucinating soldier who thought he was a puffin - test results suggest otherwise. Of 80,000 soldiers tested for drugs in 1997, less than one per cent were positive. Several organisations including Alcohol Concern, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), Drugs And The Workplace and the TUC are encouraging employers to formulate drug misuse policies in the absence of government legislation. Drug testing is viewed as one tool among many and the intention is to remove the drug, not the user, from the workplace. As Anna Bradley, executive director of The Institute For The Study Of Drug Dependency, has said, the question most employers need to ask themselves is not, 'who is using drugs or alcohol?' but, 'who has a problem?' But the deeper this subject is delved into, the more pronounced the generation gap becomes. The HSE's check list for signs of 'drug misuse' includes mood changes, irritability, confusion, abnormal fluctuations and poor time-keeping. These could, quite feasibly, apply to anyone with a demanding job.

However, cocaine seriously destabilises the work-place if, as US figures suggest, two out of five cocaine users sell drugs to other staff and almost one in five steal from their co-workers. Yet it's the dope smoker who is most vulnerable to drugs tests because metabolites detected by the test can take up to 30 days to leave the body. A cocaine user is clean in just two to four days. The technology to correlate the drug levels found in a sample with actual mental damage is not yet available, and won't be for some years. So a positive test for cannabis shows nothing about how intoxicated the subject is, but plenty about what they did the previous weekend. Agencies are even talking about counselling for cannabis users.

Would you pass the drugs test? continues

	At the same time, sales in the US of home-testing kits, such as saliva test Parents Alert Inc and Drug Alert, which is used to wipe surfaces and can be tested for drug residue, have rocketed as petrified parents snoop on their offspring. At least one US lab is understood to be courting two British supermarket chains with similar products. Drug wipes are already available in the UK from specialist outlets such as Spymaster. All but the loopiest observers will recognise the need for random drug testing in 'safety critical' industries. Pilled-up pilots, tripped-out train drivers and strung-out surgeons are all an obvious danger. As a spokesman for the Ministry Of Defence puts it: "We can't faff about - we're using lethal weapons." But drug testing for purely economic reasons is another matter entirely. The Drugs And The Workplace initiative, a resource centre for businesses, maintains that drug users are five times more likely than non-users to file a compensation claim. And recent British statistics estimate that employers lose £800 million a year because of staff drug abuse. Such figures are hotly disputed. Many observers argue that they ignore other factors - stress, personal problems or poor safety measures, for example. Though US campaign group NORML's argument that dope smokers work harder to earn extra money to buy dope is best saved for late-night bollocks-talking, rather than your next human resources conference. Unless Cheech and Chong are running it.
	Anecdotal evidence to support the idea that Britain's workers are snortin' and cavortin' all over the shop is hardly overwhelming. There are 'drugs at work' stories that make the headlines, such as writer Will Self being caught taking heroin on John Major's private plane during the last election, or the Charlton Athletic footballers who tested positive for a variety of drugs in 1996. But these are far from being shop floor exposés. And, although the broadsheets seem intent on portraying drug use as endemic in the Army - there was a particularly good Sunday Times report about a hallucinating soldier who thought he was a puffin - test results suggest otherwise. Of 80,000 soldiers tested for drugs in 1997, less than one per cent were positive. Several organisations including Alcohol Concern, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), Drugs And The Workplace and the TUC are encouraging employers to formulate drug misuse policies in the absence of government legislation. Drug testing is viewed as one tool among many and the intention is to remove the drug, not the user, from the workplace. As Anna Bradley, executive director of The Institute For The Study Of Drug Dependency, has said, the question most employers need to ask themselves is not, 'who is using drugs or alcohol?' but, 'who has a problem?' But the deeper this subject is delved into, the more pronounced the generation gap becomes. The HSE's check list for signs of 'drug misuse' includes mood changes, irritability, confusion, abnormal fluctuations and poor time-keeping. These could, quite feasibly, apply to anyone with a demanding job.
	However, cocaine seriously destabilises the work-place if, as US figures suggest, two out of five cocaine users sell drugs to other staff and almost one in five steal from their co-workers. Yet it's the dope smoker who is most vulnerable to drugs tests because metabolites detected by the test can take up to 30 days to leave the body. A cocaine user is clean in just two to four days. The technology to correlate the drug levels found in a sample with actual mental damage is not yet available, and won't be for some years. So a positive test for cannabis shows nothing about how intoxicated the subject is, but plenty about what they did the previous weekend. Agencies are even talking about counselling for cannabis users.
	Would you pass the drugs test? continues