Drug Testing in the Workplace

On current trends within two years it will be almost impossible for recreational drug users to get a job with larger companies. Drug testing at work is probably the single most effective weapon we have against adult substance abuse. It is a proven, low cost strategy which identifies those needing help, reduces demand, cuts accidents and sick leave, improves attendance and increases productivity. (Half page feature by Dr Patrick Dixon, Director Global Change Ltd, originally published in the Times 5/11/98 but even more sharply relevant today).

Yet drug testing is (or rather was) highly controversial: it penalises users with positive drug tests that can bear little or no relation to work performance, encourages knee-jerk dismissal and discrimination at interview. It costs money, invades privacy and smacks of authoritarianism.

Despite all this, almost overnight it has become fashionable to talk of testing millions of people at work for both alcohol and drugs. Just over six months ago the idea seemed so extreme that the government cut it out of the White Paper altogether – with small concessions for prisons and roadside.

In a dramatic policy shift, drugs czar Keith Halliwell and government Ministers have started encouraging drug testing by employers. They are following a quiet revolution, largely unreported because firms have been scared of drug tests by bad publicity.

The government’s own Forensic Science Agency alone carried out over a million workplace drug tests last year, with a rush of interest from transport, construction, manufacturing and financial services industries. Last month the International Petroleum Exchange joined London Transport and many others in random drug testing.

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