Issue 11 In their article “Strengthening the Case for Workplace Drug Testing: The growing Problem of Methamphetamines”, Elaine Davis and Stacie Hueller discusses how drug testing has become common in many businesses throughout the United States because of the over use of drugs such as methamphetamine (meth). The use of meth is causing alarm in the U.S. since there have been many reports of negative behavior, excessive absences, and low productivity at work due to drugs. According to the U.S. Department of Labor estimates annual workplace losses due to drug use of over $100 billion. Nowadays from local merchants to businesses with a global reach, many of these companies are spending a fortune to ensure their workforce is drug free by implementing a drug test. One of the conditions for employment in certain jobs is a mandatory drug test and the specific test that requires an employer depends largely on the company budget and availability of testing agencies. Drug tests generally involve an external evaluation agency that collects urine or blood of workers and processes the results to the employer. The failure of a drug test is usually grounds for dismissal, but employers must be careful in how the evidence is administered to remain within the law. They also mention that although drug testing and drug free workplace policies are the two most common alternatives there are some companies that think they need to take stronger measures that can even lead workers to jail by using undercover agents. They argue that sometimes is not the employees fault but the company’s culture because some employees are being asked by their employers to do a lot more, and meth seems to work very well in stressful or long hours of repetitive jobs such as constructions and manufacturing. Meth is also increasing as a white collar drug. According to the California Bar Association “one in four lawyers who are admitted voluntarily to drug rehabilitation are addicted to methamphetamines.” Methamphetamine use may continue but communities should take control of this increasing problem by educating the employees and performing drug test regularly. In his article “Drug Testing Does No Good”, Russ Belville discusses one of the many reasons why drug testing should be avoid .He mentions that the main reason why a company lose its productivity is because according to the Committee on Drug Use in the Workplace (CDUW): drug testing is expensive, it lowers employee morale, drug use may actually increase productivity for some people, and drug testing may lead to marijuana smokers. He also indicates that sometimes a positive drug test doesn’t mean a person is under the influence of drugs, in fact it only indicates that a person has done drugs in the past. And not even that sometimes it can even lead to a false positive only by taking amoxicillin which is the most common antibiotic prescribed or other medications. He argues that for every false positive there is always a person who has suffer the indignity of the accusation in front of co-workers and friends. But beyond all that he claims this is un-American. Since we live in a country where our Founding Fathers laid out our basic liberties in the Bill of Rights and this drug test violates more than one of our most sacred liberties. In his article he also mentions the Fourth and the Fifth Amendment by saying that the Fifth Amendment lays out two basic legal points: “We cannot be compelled to testify against ourselves and that we are innocent until proven guilty.” In this case even if your body proves you to be innocent a drug test assumes you are guilty. The fourth Amendment shows how drug testing results in an invasion of privacy. Belville states that “drug testing is but one of the many failures in our government’s war on casual drug users, and its failure to achieve its stated goals is one of the easiest to prove.” As I was reading the article
