Employers have been told to consider drug testing middle class professionals to help stem Britain’s spiralling cocaine trade. The country’s most senior police officer said affluent workers are fuelling the £1billion annual market in the drug. Bernard Hogan-Howe said many of them are working as surgeons, teachers and nurses or in other roles where cocaine use puts lives at risk.
The Metropolitan Police commissioner said public and private sector employers should consider bringing in compulsory regular drug testing as a condition of employment. He suggested that staff who test positive could then be given the choice between changing their lifestyle or being sacked.
Speaking to the Policy Exchange think tank in London, he said he did not want to be operated on by a ‘high’ surgeon or ride on a bus driven by a cocaine addict. Mr Hogan-Howe told ministers, police chiefs and business leaders that they did not know how many drug addicts they employ. He said: ‘What could you do if you started some kind of sobriety testing in employment? Not to tell the police but as an issue of employment.’ Mr Hogan-Howe added that employers could tell staff: ‘You have got a choice, you either change what you are doing because I don’t want you working for me any more.’
He said ‘a significant amount’ of the millions generated by the cocaine trade came from people who had jobs.
