AFFIRMATIVE — WORKPLACE DRUG TESTING — SOLVENCY 274

END OF WORKPLACE DRUG TESTING WOULD BE ACCEPTED AND SUCCESSFUL

MOST AMERICANS ARE OPPOSED TO WORKPLACE DRUG TESTING

Charles Sykes, Senior Fellow at the Wisconsin Policy Institute, THE END OF PRIVACY, 1999, EE2001 -JGM, p. 148-9

For many workers the requirement that they submit to drug tests is the most obvious and direct challenge to their privacy. One study found that 80 percent of the companies in the survey tested their employees for drugs, and millions of Americans are required to urinate into cups, jars, and bottles every year as a condition of their employment. Although Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia has called drug testing a "needless indignity," it has widespread support and illustrates the problems of balancing privacy concerns with other priorities. Supporters of drug testing point to the overwhelming evidence that drug use not only exacts a societal cost, but also hurts the productivity of American business. Recent government estimates put the cost of drug abuse to the nation's employers at $60 to $100 billion a year in property damage, absenteeism and tardiness, reduced productivity and quality, higher costs for health insurance and worker's compensation, employee theft, and the turnover of workers, Many of the nation's largest and most prestigious corporations require preemployment tests; the list includes more than one-quarter of the Fortune 500 corporations and such trendsetters as the New York Times, IBM, Exxon, Federal Express, AT&T, and Lockheed. Obviously, the most compelling justifications of drug testing involve jobs that affect safety. such q,; railway workers and airline pilots. But the vast majority of people tested are not in the classic "safety-sensitive" jobs.

DRUG TESTING LAWS ARE FOUNDED IN FAULTY INFORMATION BASED UPON MASSIVE ONE SIDED GOVERNMENTAL CAMPAIGNS AGAINST DRUGS AND ARE UNNECESSARY ESPECIALLY WHEN COMPOUNDED WITH THE EXTENT TO WHICH THESE LAWS ARE A VIOLATION OF PRIVACY RIGHTS.

Mechelle Zarou, December, 1999, " THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY: DRUG TESTING BY EMPLOYERS IN ALASKA", Alaska Law Review

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With such inadequate information disseminated to the public by the nation's huge (and expensive) anti-drug campaign, it is hard to accept at face value the need for drug testing in the workplace, especially considering the invasion of privacy such testing necessarily entails. n199 While employment drug testing rests on unproven grounds, it has become the norm in many of the nation's workplaces, from government regulated industries to retail outlets. Until scientifically reliable studies generated by non-government sources demonstrate an actual need for drug testing, employers should continue to rely on their own good judgment as to whether employees are performing at acceptable levels, instead of resorting to drug testing. Voters should tell their legislators to vote against the proposed Private Sector Drug-Free Workplace Act and similar legislation, at least until there are more reliable indicators that such drastic limits on employees' privacy rights are absolutely necessary to achieve safe and effective workplaces. We are entering the realm Justice Marshall warned against in 1989, n200 where fundamental freedoms are sacrificed in the name of an urgent cause, without a single reliable piece of evidence to show that the cause is valid, or that the sacrifices are required on the basis of anything more than stereotypes about the dangers drug abusers present to the American workplace.