Can someone tell me why you need to get drug tested for a non manual/dangerous job

[Newbie 0]

Why would some desk jockey need a drug test? Why on earth would what i do in my own personal time and space stop me getting a job i am more than capable of achieving brilliantly at?

I have never been drug tested and can understand SOME places wanting to test me (where i'm in charge of peoples lives, using heavy machinery, am armed, need to drive something, in charge of children etc) but why do some many companies do this? Is in not an infringement on personal freedoms?

I don't take illegal drugs any more but i would consider this highly invasive of my personal freedoms if i couldn't get a job as an accountant at some firm because i liked to smoke a bong at night.

"Skydiving is a door"
Happythoughts

[NWFlyer 2]

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Is in not an infringement on personal freedoms?

Nope. The employer can put whatever conditions they want on your employment. You don't have to like it, but if you want to work there, they can make you comply. You are free to work elsewhere if you like and they are free not to employ you if they like.

"There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

[dan_iv 0]

personal freedom doesn't happen to include illegal activities...

[markd_nscr986 0]

CTA

Marc SCR 6046 SCS 3004

[Hazarrd 1]

what kind of question is that? how about drugs might influence your productivity/punctuality? go buy Vales detox, works like a charm.

.-.

[akarunway 1]

I work HARDCORE dangerous jobs. Get drug tested every one. It's a fuckin joke. Half the people cheat on em anyway. All about insurance bullshit and it doesn't mean shit. Just came off a job for Bechtel and they are SELF insured. Tax breaks me thinks in the long run or something. It's also some sort of control freak thing for the masses. Just wait. In a couple yrs. they'll be doing saliva, skin and hair follicle tests and prolly DNA. Then you get your 666 tatoo. Big Brother is alive and well.

I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

[kelpdiver 2]

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Is in not an infringement on personal freedoms?

Nope. The employer can put whatever conditions they want on your employment.

Might want to read the law a bit. This is flat out false.

Say I asked you if you were thinking of starting a family soon.

As AK correctly points out, the testing is more intrusion than effective management of the employees. The Bay Area is full of potheads and they have little trouble with companies that do 100% testing.

[AlexCrowley 0]

basic security issues.

Many desk jockeys are more able to cause way more problems than someone doing a 'dangerous' job.

TV's got them images, TV's got them all, nothing's shocking.

[NWFlyer 2]

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Might want to read the law a bit. This is flat out false.

Say I asked you if you were thinking of starting a family soon.

You are correct; my statement was too broad. There certainly are employment laws that protect employees against discrimination based on who they are an (in limited cases) what they do in their off hours.

However, I would be very surprised if those protections are ever extended to illegal activities.

[unformed 0]

An employer has rights that a government would not have. Besides race, age, and sex discriminition, most states will allow an employer to fire you because they didn't like the shirt you were wearing. (I know Florida is that way.)

However, just as much as theuy have a right to request you to do a drug test, you have just as much right to refuse it, and they have just as much right to not give you a job. It comes down to:

Is it easier for you to find another job?

or

Easier for them to find someone as good as you?

I'll go with the latter.

However, if you're smart, you can pass a drug test, and still do drugs anyways.

This ad space for sale.

[AlexCrowley 0]

thats the true irony of drug testing. You only catch the stoners.

TV's got them images, TV's got them all, nothing's shocking.

[unformed 0]

Precisely, the ones you don't have to worry about. A smart cokehead will stop for three days and be clean.

This ad space for sale.

[AlexCrowley 0]

The cokehead will be more motivated when high

TV's got them images, TV's got them all, nothing's shocking.

[unformed 0]

more motivated, yeah ... but not to work ... it'll be more along the lines of finding more coke and talking

This ad space for sale.

[AlexCrowley 0]

Youve never seen a cokehead programmer, obviously

TV's got them images, TV's got them all, nothing's shocking.

[RhondaLea 3]

I dunno. I once dated a nurse with a drug problem.

He would steal his patients meds--valium, xanax, various pain pills. When he got his hands on oxycontin, he would break it down and use a needle.

Finally, he got really fucked up one night (sucked out a fentanyl pre-surgical patch) and stole a bottle of...damn, I can't remember. Percoset, maybe? About 20 of 'em. He came home with only a few left.

He had a bad feeling about it because people were asking him all night if he was okay, so he started drinking a lot of water, and then he picked up one of those detox kits at the health food store. Two days later, he got a call for the drug test. They tested 15 nurses because of what he had done, but he came up clean.

Drugs tests aren't all that cheap. It cost his employer money, it cost his co-workers time. But the worst of it was that for quite a few years (and maybe even now), he was hurting his patients by depriving them of medications they needed.

I object to drug tests on theoretical legal grounds, but as a practical matter, I think more employers should do them as a matter of course.

rl

If you don't know where you're going, you should know where you came from. Gullah Proverb

[unformed 0]

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Youve never seen a cokehead programmer, obviously

I AM a cokehead programmer. I don't like working when on coke.

But then again, I never went to work hopped up.

This ad space for sale.

[lawrocket 3]

I simply will not allow drug users to work for me. Period. We have acces to sensitive personal information, not to mention a large stash of money in our trust account that is not even our money. It's our clients' money.

Someone in need of a fix will do just about anything, and I'm not gonna be on the losing end of that scenario. If an applicant doesn't like it, the the applicant can go screw herself or himself, and work for a cooler boss.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[christoofar 0]

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The cokehead will be more motivated when high

A meth user will be OCD about getting things done. I know someone who did tina for a while and her fucking apartment didn't have a microbe in it.

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[RhondaLea 3]

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Someone in need of a fix will do just about anything, and I'm not gonna be on the losing end of that scenario. If an applicant doesn't like it, the the applicant can go screw herself or himself, and work for a cooler boss.

I worked for a cooler boss.

He used to smoke pot in his office. That wouldn't have been so bad, but he was also doing a lot of coke...when led him to believe that hiring an 18-year old stripper with a 9th grade education as a probate "paralegal" was a smart idea. Better yet, he took her on a two week vacation to Europe and bought her a car.

As his work fell off, he supported his various habits--as well as his wife and two children--by stealing $450k in trust funds.

It's remarkable the ideas that drugs will put in some people's heads.

rl

If you don't know where you're going, you should know where you came from. Gullah Proverb

[ExAFO 0]

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Why would some desk jockey need a drug test? Why on earth would what i do in my own personal time and space stop me getting a job i am more than capable of achieving brilliantly at?

Reliability? Moral Character? Liability spawned from drug-fueled incompetence?

Illinois needs a CCW Law. NOW.

[peacefuljeffrey 0]

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Why would some desk jockey need a drug test?

"Because if you're not doing anything wrong and have nothing to hide, you shouldn't mind."

People have lost their grip on the notion that we should not have to live our lives suspected all the time -- by our government, by our employers -- and because SOME people don't care about the right to be left alone and treated as innocent, ALL of us end up subject to the things they don't object to.


-Jeffrey

-Jeffrey
"With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

[ExAFO 0]

Wah. Life's a bitch when the laws get enforced in innovative ways, eh?

Illinois needs a CCW Law. NOW.

[peacefuljeffrey 0]

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personal freedom doesn't happen to include illegal activities...

The question is, is it the prerogative of the employer to search you to find out if you engage in illegal activities? And why just this one? Why doesn't the employer send a private investigator to follow you to see if you break the speed limit, hire prostitutes, shoplift...?

You're talking about it being illegal, but you're not explaining why THAT ONE ILLEGAL ACT is the one that employers should be trying to detect on behalf of the police.

Not only do I not do illegal drugs, I HAVE NEVER done illegal drugs. And if my job said, "Next week, we're starting a policy of random drug tests for all you employees," I would fuckin' walk. In protest, I would quit and tell them they can fuck themselves. Believe me, their bottom line would miss my expertise at what I do, and I would tell them that because they want to drug test me, an employee who does not do drugs, they are going to now lose me.

That's an invasion of my privacy that I will not allow to go unopposed.
Unfortunately, there is no real chance of getting such policies made illegal -- it would be hard enough to get them made unpopular.


-Jeffrey

-Jeffrey
"With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

[Zenister 0]

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thats the true irony of drug testing. You only catch the stoners.

exactly the problem... Drug testing does little to deter use and more to contribute to the use of 'harder', less detectable drugs and/or rampant alcoholism..

of course society and business seems to believe a legal raging alcoholic is a preferable result.

____________________________________
Those who fail to learn from the past are simply Doomed.