Essay - Drug Screening is Used More and More as a Way...

Drug Screening is used more and more as a way of making decisions about human resource issues and to protect companies from problems that might be caused by employees using drugs, up to and including potential litigation. At the same time, employee gro*****s often oppose drug screening without some reason for suspicion of *****s. Some types of employment have used ***** screening with greater impunity, notably for jobs ***** entail some public safety issue, such as drivers, engineers, ***** pilots. In other cases, the link between drug use and ***** problems companies might have is more economic and so not given the same priority. Screening methods ***** been made ***** reliable ***** less invasive over ***** years, which also reduces some of the rationale offered by unions and employee groups for not allowing such screening on a broad basis. The degree to ***** business dem*****s the right ***** include drug screening as a c*****dition of ***** problem for ***** is found in workplace accidents and the costs *****curred for medical *****sistance and for time lost in production. In 1997, some 5,300 workers were killed on ***** job, and an***** 3.3 million workers were treated ***** hospital emergency wards. Reducing workplace injury rates is a major focus for the Department of Health ***** Human Services. Not all of these ***** involved drug use, but it is believed that drug use does contribute to such accidents and that reducing ***** and alcohol use ***** employees would also reduce rates of injury. ***** scope ***** the problem is *****ed by a recent study of the *****:

***** screening of ***** (for c*****use, periodic, preemployment, random, and postaccident) by one testing provider found that 4.9% ***** workers tested were positive for illicit drugs... Among the subset of safety-sensitive workers, 3.1% of tests were *****, and among tests performed after an injury/accident event, 3.9% were positive. (Spicer, Miller, and Smith para. 2)

***** perception ***** this is a major *****sue has included the passage of various regulations to impose drug screening in the *****, ***** various stas have passed laws concerning issues impacting ***** workplace: "Issues such as ***** security, a v*****riety of prevailing-wage issues, equal employment opportunity, wages paid, time off, drug and ***** testing, child labor, human trafficking, and *****ion for immigrants ***** included in new or amended legislation enacted during 2006" (Fitzpatrick *****. 3).

Such ***** testing programs increase with the perception that there is a problem, though such progr*****ms also ***** meet ***** intense criticism and resistance by labor and consumer groups. These programs have also increased in number even ***** ***** is a lack of rigorous empirical evidence regarding their effectiveness. A recent study analyzed national data on over 15,000 U.S. households to determine whether various types of workplace drug testing programs influenced the probability of drug use by workers. It was found that the estimated marginal effects ***** drug testing ***** any drug use were negative, significant, and relatively large, meaning ***** ***** testing ***** can achieve ***** of