Positive drug tests will ALWAYS lead to a dismissal in a work place - or at the very least it will ruin the persons ability to function effectively in that workplace. It's just naive to believe otherwise. Drugs are illegal and frowned upon by the majority of the populace.
It is also impossible to guarantee that a test will determine if a person is currently under the effect of a drug (with the required 0% false positive rate), and it is naive to believe that employers would even try to require such a test.
I think one of the main issues with all supporting arguments for workplace drug testing is the implicit assumption that the drug use WILL cause problems in the workplace.
Personally, I don't agree with that assumption. Sure, it will be the case in many situations with many different drugs - someone off their head will often not be able to perform competently. But we don't know that someone who tests positive for drug use would have been incompetent in their job. This would require a lot more information than we currently have. And in reality, the problem for the employer is their lack of competence - not their drug use.
Put another way, I could easily cause the same workplace problems by not sleeping enough every night, or eating badly, or catching some virus causing me to be sick. Yet drug testing will not help the employer protect against this. If I was a bus driver then not sleeping properly would make me dangerous. Yet it's not being proposed to test for this.
Employers SHOULD be concerned about whether an employee can perform the duties of their position, and do it safely. Thus they should be developing "tests" to ensure this is the case - regardless of the possible causes of employees failing such a test.
[ 29 November 2002: Message edited by: mort ]
