Newsgroups: alt.drugs,talk.politics.drugs Subject: News article: Drug-testing to be expanded Date: 9 Feb 1994 20:36:08 -0600 Summary: Drug-testing policy to be expanded Just recently read this article. I thought this newsgroup might be interested. I am not going to reprint the whole thing just the first 5 or 6 paragraphs. From the Kansas City Star Friday, February 4, 1994, pg A-11, col 1. "Drug-testing policy to be expanded" "Federal requirements to include more workers in transportation." The Washington Post --------------------------------- WASHINGTON -- Transportation Secretary Federico Pena on Thursday announced widely expanded alcohol- and drug-testing requirements for truckdrivers, pilots, railroaders and other "safety-sensitive" transportation workers. The new tests, which will begin next year, will cost the industry $200 million annually and will affect 7.4 million workers. "We are working to ensure that when you board the subway or a plane a train or a bus, those responsible for your safety will have strong encentives to be sober and fit for duty," said Pena, who was ordered to consider changes to 1991 legistlation. The new regulation order that alcohol tests, now required only after a railroad or maritime accident, be administered randomly and at the time of hiring, when a supervison observes suspicious behaviour and when suspended employees return to work after rehabilitation. In some cases, post-accident testing will be expanded to other forms of transportation. "Drug testing is already required under those circumstances in some industries. But under the new regulations, the 3.6 million workers now subject to drug testing will more than double as drug testing is expanded to include more categories of workers, including school bus drivers, mass-transit operators, intrastate truckers and any worker with a commercial driver's license. Unions and industry officials objected to the expanded regulations and argued that current drug-testing programs have found a miniscule amount of drugs. [....] All tests would be administered by companies rather than the government and in most cases, alcohol levels would be determined by breath test. No testing would take place in wayside truck-scale areas. The rules go into effect Jan. 1, 1995, for companies with 50 or more employees and Jan. 1, 1996, for smaller companies. ------------End of article---------------------------------------------- Going at this rate, they'll soon install cameras and microphones in the homes of every worker in the U.S. What do they have to hide ? We can't allow people with unstable home lives to be piloting planes, driving the subway trains, etc.... I find it amazing that we are going to have to spend over $200 million on a project that has not shown any evidence of increased safety. What's also amazing is the apparant acceptance of alcohol in the process. The workers are only temporarily removed from duty when their blood alcohol level is between .02 - .04 . However if a different employee smoked a joint at a weekend concert a few weeks back, they would be suspended and removed from service until after professional treatment. How can anyone purporting to advocate safety in the workplace allow their workers to use alcohol and even operate planes, trains, etc... with BACs of under .02, but then rule out a person who smoked pot a week ago. The solution obviously lies in impairment testing. Impairment testing will more accurately find the people who are impaired, and since this is the alleged goal of the program, we should switch to some kind of impairment test. Piss tests and the like unduly intrude on the private personal lives of people and are by no means considered to be an effective or accurate means of predicting impairment in employees. If the employees are impaired, then fine, get rid of them...but if they show up to work every day sober and un-impaired there should be absolutely no reason for the company to interfere with the private personal moral choices it's employees are making. In fact, the companies don't want to do the testing at all, but are being forced to do so at great cost. -- "Law never made men a whit more just; and, by | means of their respect for it, even the well | deposed are daily made the agents of injustice" | --Henry David Thoreau "Civil Disobedience" |