Newsgroups: alt.drugs,talk.politics.drugs
Subject: News article: Drug-testing to be expanded
Date: 9 Feb 1994 20:36:08 -0600
Summary: Drug-testing policy to be expanded


Just recently read this article.   I thought this newsgroup might be
interested.   I am not going to reprint the whole thing just the first
5 or 6 paragraphs.


From the Kansas City Star Friday, February 4, 1994, pg A-11, col 1.



"Drug-testing policy to be expanded"

"Federal requirements to include more workers in transportation."

The Washington Post
---------------------------------

     WASHINGTON -- Transportation Secretary Federico Pena on Thursday
announced widely expanded alcohol- and drug-testing requirements for
truckdrivers, pilots, railroaders and other "safety-sensitive"
transportation workers.

     The new tests, which will begin next year, will cost the industry
$200 million annually and will affect 7.4 million workers.

     "We are working to ensure that when you board the subway or a plane
a train or a bus, those responsible for your safety will have strong
encentives to be sober and fit for duty," said Pena, who was ordered
to consider changes to 1991 legistlation.

     The new regulation order that alcohol tests, now required only
after a railroad or maritime accident, be administered randomly and at
the time of hiring, when a supervison observes suspicious behaviour
and when suspended employees return to work after rehabilitation.  In
some cases, post-accident testing will be expanded to other forms of
transportation.

     "Drug testing is already required under those circumstances in some
industries.  But under the new regulations, the 3.6 million workers now
subject to drug testing will more than double as drug testing is
expanded to include more categories of workers, including school bus
drivers, mass-transit operators, intrastate truckers and any worker with
a commercial driver's license.

     Unions and industry officials objected to the expanded regulations
and argued that current drug-testing programs have found a miniscule
amount of drugs.

     [....]

     All tests would be administered by companies rather than the
government and in most cases, alcohol levels would be determined by
breath test.    No testing would take place in wayside truck-scale
areas.    The rules go into effect Jan. 1, 1995, for companies with
50 or more employees and Jan. 1, 1996, for smaller companies.

------------End of article----------------------------------------------

      Going at this rate, they'll soon install cameras and microphones
in the homes of every worker in the U.S.     What do they have to hide ?
We can't allow people with unstable home lives to be piloting planes,
driving the subway trains, etc....

      I find it amazing that we are going to have to spend over $200
million on a project that has not shown any evidence of increased
safety.    What's also amazing is the apparant acceptance of alcohol
in the process.    The workers are only temporarily removed from duty
when their blood alcohol level is between .02 - .04 .    However if
a different employee smoked a joint at a weekend concert a few weeks
back, they would be suspended and removed from service until after
professional treatment.     How can anyone purporting to advocate
safety in the workplace allow their workers to use alcohol and even
operate planes, trains, etc... with BACs of under .02, but then rule
out a person who smoked pot a week ago.

      The solution obviously lies in impairment testing.   Impairment
testing will more accurately find the people who are impaired, and
since this is the alleged goal of the program, we should switch to
some kind of impairment test.      Piss tests and the like unduly
intrude on the private personal lives of people and are by no means
considered to be an effective or accurate means of predicting
impairment in employees.     If the employees are impaired, then fine,
get rid of them...but if they show up to work every day sober and
un-impaired there should be absolutely no reason for the company to
interfere with the private personal moral choices it's employees are
making.    In fact, the companies don't want to do the testing at all,
but are being forced to do so at great cost.

-- 
"Law never made men a whit more just; and, by     |
 means of their respect for it, even the well     |
 deposed are daily made the agents of injustice"  |
    --Henry David Thoreau "Civil Disobedience"    |