The Basic Approach of Employee Drug Testing
Arguments for and against employee drug testing typically focus on the privacy of the tested employees. While the privacy of employees is certainly important, it does not deserve the right to obliterate any efforts made toward an improved employee safety. Such improved employee safety stands out as being one of the primary reasons for an employee drug testing program. Detection of drug use by an employee can often demonstrate that that employee willfully hampered the proper functioning of his or her body system. Such an employee has obviously chosen to place personal enjoyment before the safety of his or her fellow workers.
Three levels of deterrence can be found within the basic surveillance procedures called employee drug testing. Each level has a certain ability to force the potential drug user to pause before proceeding with his or her ill-timed indulgence. Each has the ability to complicate the enjoyable process an off-work employee has anticipated.
On one level a worker’s simple awareness of an employee drug testing program within his or her workplace should serve to dampen the desire of that employee to engage in drug use. The employee does not want to get caught. The fact that employees fear detection of their drug habit has been demonstrated by the efforts of certain employees to escape possible detection.
Sometimes drug-using employees rely on adulteration to disguise their drug use. Sometimes they depend on substitution to cover-up a test sample that is sure to test positive for a banned substance. Sometimes they resort to use of a last-ditch effort—the flushing of the test sample.
Once a worker has escaped detection by an employee drug testing program then that individual could still have reason to refrain from further use of illicit drugs. The employee would know that the chance for future detection existed. Moreover, the employee would know that detection could lead to a possible punishment.
On that second level, the employee’s possible punishment serves as a deterrent. Because the punishment varies from case to case, an employee can never know for sure what fate awaits his or her refusal to follow company policy. That very uncertainty can offer the employer a mild level of deterrence.
When one employee gets word of the punishment given to a fellow-employee, then that employee appreciates the severity of the punishment. The more severe the punishment is, the greater the chance that any employee drug testing program will manage to prevent expanded drug use by the workers within a company. The successes achieved by the threat of a severe punishment have contributed to the fall in drug use by employees. The reported rate for such use fell from 13.6% to 4.1% between 1998 and 2005.
The nature of the punishment therefore serves as yet a third level of deterrence. The nature of the punishment, in addition to the treat of a possible punishment, works to force every employee to think twice before enjoying an illegal substance while away from the workplace. The nature of the punishment, especially when it is a severe punishment, manages to darken the cloud that has already formed above the head of the intermittent or steady drug user.
That cloud would most certainly darken the skies of a drug user who returned to work within 24 hours after his or her enjoyment of a controlled substance.
Three levels of deterrence can be found within the basic surveillance procedures called employee drug testing. Each level has a certain ability to force the potential drug user to pause before proceeding with his or her ill-timed indulgence. Each has the ability to complicate the enjoyable process an off-work employee has anticipated.
On one level a worker’s simple awareness of an employee drug testing program within his or her workplace should serve to dampen the desire of that employee to engage in drug use. The employee does not want to get caught. The fact that employees fear detection of their drug habit has been demonstrated by the efforts of certain employees to escape possible detection.
Sometimes drug-using employees rely on adulteration to disguise their drug use. Sometimes they depend on substitution to cover-up a test sample that is sure to test positive for a banned substance. Sometimes they resort to use of a last-ditch effort—the flushing of the test sample.
Once a worker has escaped detection by an employee drug testing program then that individual could still have reason to refrain from further use of illicit drugs. The employee would know that the chance for future detection existed. Moreover, the employee would know that detection could lead to a possible punishment.
On that second level, the employee’s possible punishment serves as a deterrent. Because the punishment varies from case to case, an employee can never know for sure what fate awaits his or her refusal to follow company policy. That very uncertainty can offer the employer a mild level of deterrence.
When one employee gets word of the punishment given to a fellow-employee, then that employee appreciates the severity of the punishment. The more severe the punishment is, the greater the chance that any employee drug testing program will manage to prevent expanded drug use by the workers within a company. The successes achieved by the threat of a severe punishment have contributed to the fall in drug use by employees. The reported rate for such use fell from 13.6% to 4.1% between 1998 and 2005.
The nature of the punishment therefore serves as yet a third level of deterrence. The nature of the punishment, in addition to the treat of a possible punishment, works to force every employee to think twice before enjoying an illegal substance while away from the workplace. The nature of the punishment, especially when it is a severe punishment, manages to darken the cloud that has already formed above the head of the intermittent or steady drug user.
That cloud would most certainly darken the skies of a drug user who returned to work within 24 hours after his or her enjoyment of a controlled substance.
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