Drug Testing of Employees

Drug use became a serious concern in the workplace during the 1980s. Companies involved in the oil, chemical, and nuclear industry as well as travel and transportation sectors, became areas of concern especially when accidents occurred causing deaths and immense financial ramifications.

Drug testing has evolved and is now used for a variety of reasons. The main uses for drug testing include screening potential employees during the interview process, creating safety precautions for workers and the surrounding public, and monitoring drug use in the prison population. Today all federal employees, transportation employees, prisoners, and athletes competing on the national, Olympic, or professional level are subject to drug testing under current federal laws. In addition to these federal guidelines, each state has adopted its own guidelines involving drug testing in the workplace. Many private sector companies are also adopting drug testing into their bylaws in order to achieve a drug-free workplace. However, each company has its own policies that are not always identical to the federal guidelines.

Military personnel were the first employees to be tested for drugs in the United States. More specifically, military officials were concerned with how the use of illegal drugs affected combat readiness and performance. In 1971, the U.S. Congress advised the secretary of defense to devise methods for identifying and treating drug-abusing military personnel.

The problem of drugs in the workplace surfaced after a study performed by the National Transportation Safety Board, which examined the involvement of drugs, including alcohol, in train accidents. As a result of this study, the Federal Railway Administration and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) started to create drug regulations for the Department of Transportation (DOT). Consequentially, other public sectors—including the oil, chemical, transportation, and nuclear industries—became concerned about drugs in the workplace and followed suit in developing their own drug-testing programs. The laboratory procedures developed for each industry varied and were not consistent in drug-testing protocols. This caused controversy and resulted in lawsuits by employees upset about violations of their privacy and constitutional rights.

In 1986, the executive branch of the federal government took special interests in drug testing. President Ronald W. Reagan issued Executive Order No. 12564, which enforced each federal executive agency leader to develop drug-testing programs for employees in sensitive positions. The main goal of the order was to maintain a drug-free federal workplace. During that same year, NIDA met at a conference and concluded that random drug screening was appropriate under a well-defined program and was legally defensible in certain situations. In addition, a definition was formulated at this conference that described specific situations [Page 634]when drug testing was appropriate for employees. NIDA concluded that all individuals must be informed that they are subjected to drug testing, the confidentiality of the test results must be secure, and all positive test results on the initial screen must be confirmed with an alternate laboratory procedure.

Two years later in 1988, NIDA, under the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), released mandatory technical and laboratory procedural guidelines for all federal drug-testing programs. Several rules were established to maintain consistent drug testing from laboratory to laboratory. These guidelines determined that urine would be the biological sample of choice for the screening of drug use. The guidelines also maintained that all drug-testing meet specific criteria in order to maintain laboratory accreditation. Procedures for specimen collection, procedures for transmitting samples to testing laboratories, assay protocols, evaluation of test results, quality control measures, record keeping, and reporting requirements were established. These specified procedures still need to be followed today for the DHHS to accredit a drug-testing laboratory. The DHHS guidelines were established to guarantee the accuracy and integrity of the test results and, most important, the privacy of the employees tested. Consequently, from these guidelines a new organization, the National Laboratory Certification Program, was created in 1988 by the DHHS/NIDA to maintain the guidelines set forth earlier in that year.

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