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By John Goff
It appears drug testing programs at work are paying off. According to Quest Diagnostics, which performed 7.8 million urine drug tests on employees and job applicants last year, only 3.6% of U.S. workers tested positive for drug use. That's down from 3.8% the previous year.
By way of comparison, a whopping 13.6% of American employees tested positive for drug use in 1988.
"We now know that the implementation of workplace drug testing programs has significantly reduced drug abuse in worker populations subject to drug testing," said Robert Willette, president of Duo Research and former chief of the research technology branch of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Positive tests for cocaine use were way down, off nearly 30% from the prior year. Quest reported that a mere 0.58% of their tests came back positive for cocaine use. Positive tests in the general U.S. workforce for methamphetamine also declined, down 21%.
On-the-job testing may not be the only reason for fewer positives, however. The recession is no doubt eating away at drug sales, as discretionary (recreational?) spending shrinks. What's more, there appears to be something of a shortage of certain illegal drugs in the U.S. Laws making it harder to buy over-the-counter medications have crimped the supply of crank, a form of methamphetamine, experts point out. Moreover, the relative strength of the Euro versus the U.S. dollar has seen some drug cartels shifting their supply to the Continent, both straining supply and boosting the street price of coke.
In addition, workers are getting smarter at avoiding detection. Certainly, employees and prospective employees can find plenty of advice--and products--on the Internet to help them pass a urine test. These range from fouling the test with vinegar, to water-loading, to changing drugs. One enterprising company also markets a prosthesis that can be pre-loaded with synthetic urine. The device--known unfortunately as the Whizzinator 5000--can be found at detox sites on the Web, and, we're guessing, specialty tool shops.
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