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Toxic Shock 063
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presents
Drug Tests : the shape of things to come...
by
Bloody Afterbirth
Toxic File #63
from HIGH TIMES, July 1990, Issue #179. Article by Elin Wilder.
Centre Of Eternity : 615.552.5747 40 Megs Lotsa Files
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Yet another highly informative and thought provoking file from the
greatest of all magazines, HIGH TIMES. As has become my habit, as 'payment'
for using their articles, I tell you, the reader, how to subscribe and get
all the things I'm leaving out.
HIGH TIMES SUBSCRIPTIONS
P.O. Box 410
Mt. Morris, IL 61054
United States Foreign (in US funds)
One Year : $29.95 $37.45
Two Years: $54.95 $68.95
They mail it in a black cornstarch bag that decomposes within one year.
If you have a credit card, you can call 800.435.0715 (In Illinois, it's
800.892.0753)
Is the government using urinalysis to help create a Super Race?
Will drug tests in the future reveal your genetic assests?
Read on...
*&^%$#@!@#$%^&*&^%$#@!@#$%^&*&^%$#@!@#$%^&*&^%$#@!@#$%^&*&^%$#@!@#$%^&*
Over 80 percent of Fortune 500 companies conduct urine tests as a
prerequisite for employment. While you may never work for a Fortune 500
company, they set the trends that other companies follow. And 80 percent is
a whopping increase over the three percent of Fortune 500 companies that
required mandatory drug testing for job applicants seven years ago.
According to the latest government statistics, the majority of Americans
approve of drug testing as an appropriate means of obtaining a drug-free
work environment. A recent poll conducted by the US Chamber of Commerce's
Institute for a Drug Free Workplace, in conjunction with the Gallup Poll,
indicated that 97 percent of all Americans believe random drug testing is
appropriate for employees in the following safety sensitive professions:
airline pilots, transportation workers, truck drivers, construction workers,
health care employees, and utility workers. Most Americans must be
completely unaware of how inaccurate and unreliable these tests are, for
when they were asked about drugs tests in non-safety sensitive fields, the
pollsters reported that 73 percent of their group approved testing of
factory workers, 67 percent approved tests for office workers, and 69 wanted
testing for media professionals. These statistics were arrived at by
polling 1,007 Americans whom the government felt were representative of the
entire nation, with an error factor of three percent.
[BA:Incidentally, NORML exposed Hoffman-La Roche Laboratories, the
nation's largest drug testing company, as one of the primary backers
of the Institute which took that survey. A conflict of interests
if there ever was one. In addition, some of the findings from the
poll that were NOT shared with the country until NORML uncovered
them were:
* Only 26 percent of those polled supported drug testing without
"reservations", "serious limitations", or "not at all."
* Less than one quarter of those polled had "ever seen or heard of
on-the-job drug use."
* Nearly all of those polled agreed with this statement : "If
employees are tested for drug use, top management also should be
tested."]
Even worse, stricter regulations for collecting urine samples are being
enforced -- such as witnessed specimen collection. The new "Drug Testing
Guidelines" issued by the Federal Department of Health and Human Services
has created a new job in relation to the testing of federal employees -- a
"Collection Site Person." This is setting a precedent for the surveillance
of workers in the name of making substitution of other people's clean urine
samples a more difficult way to beat drug tests.
FALSE POSITIVES
However, even the use of "clean" urine, free from traces of illegal
drugs, whether borrowed or bought, can register a false positive. Food and
medication the donor igested that aren't illegal can show up as drugs.
Poppy seeds (from a bagel, roll of bread, or Danish pastry) can cause a
false positive for heroin or other opiates. Vicks Formula 44 doubles as
codeine. Advil can show up as pot. And Nyquil can test positive for speed.
According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the urine tests most
commonly in use today yield false positives 10 to 30 percent of the time.
The ACLU also noted that when 120 forensic scientists, including some who
worked for drug test manufacturers, were asked "Is there anybody here who
would submit urine for drug testing if his career, reputation, freedom or
livelihood depended on it," not one of them said "Yes."
Career expert Martine Yate is well aware of the increased use of drug
testing in the workplace, as well as the inaccuracy of the tests, and he
suggests that anyone seeking employment do the following : "When you're
asked the question, `Are you willing to take a drug test as a condition of
employment,' if you expect a job offer you have to say yes...That's okay
because there's a good chance you won't be asked to actually do it. But
when it moves from the hypothetical into the practical, `Are you prepared to
take a drug test five minutes from now, or a half hour from now,' what I
suggest is that you protect yourself by saying the following:`Yes, I am more
than happy to take a drug test as a condition of employment, however, I have
seen on the television, heard on the radio, and read in the newspapers that
these tests sometimes generate false positives (and this is the key phrase)
and I am assured that you will not take offense if I ask you the
prescription drugs, the non-prescription drugs, common foods, liquids and
spices liable to generate a false positive. I am also assured that in the
event of a false positive you will use a backup test to either confirm or to
prove that positive.'"
As for the most commonly asked question, "How long does marijuana stay in
the system," the experts I spoke to, including a former narcotics agent and
the head of a private lab, disagreed. While they indicated that marijuana
coul dbe detected within the system for up to thirty days, they couldn't
come to an agreement on anything beyond that. One of the leading
authorities on drug testing in the country, Dr. John Morgan of CUNY Medical
School, had an interesting observation. One heavy pot smoker he knows of
showed positive test results six weeks after kicking the pot habit, while
another he spoke with showed up negative, even though he smoked a joint
minutes before the test, and was high during the test. Apparently, these
drug tests don't show anything until AFTER you get stoned, and after the THC
metabolite has been passed through your system.
DRUG TEST ABUSE
If this weren't strange enough, these "drug preventative" urine tests
don't just finger you for illegal substances, but for medical conditions as
well. Although it's nearly impossible to prove, there's little doubt that
some people are being discriminated against if they are found to be taking
medication for hypertension, epilepsy, depression and diabetes, among other
chronic illnesses. In 1987, a urinalysis lab caught the Washing, D.C.
police department subjecting women's urine samples to pregnancy tests
without their knowledge or permission. This is an example of one of the
most common types of urine sample misuse. Although the ACLU took the
offending police department to task for this, their action didn't get jobs
or compensation for the women who were already discriminated against.
In this instance the lab was the good guy -- acting on the employees
behalf. Unfortunately, not all labs are as diligent as that one. As the
demand for on-the-job drug testing has increased, so have the number of labs
to accomodate employers. The catch is that ANYONE can set up a lab for the
purposes of urine testing. There are no national standards at present that
regulate labs in relation to drug testing. As a result, they make a lot of
mistakes. Although figures vary on the percentage of lab errors, "up to 40
percent" suggested one expert, even the government is aware that there is a
need for the regulation of labs if drug testing is to remain the best way of
policing drug use by American workers. At a time when the country is in a
state of hysteria over employee drug use, the fact that private labs
continue to go unmonitored or regulated has ominous implications for
immediate and future employment.
A good example of what's going on happened in New York recently when a
large number of transit employees were randomly tested for drugs. All of
those employees were subsequently fired, until someone realized that every
single one of the tests had come back "positive." The lab had obviously
made a mistake. While all the transit workers won a cash settlement, their
lives were effectively ruined. And what if no one had ever noticed, or if
they screwed up only half of the tests?
BEYOND URINALYSIS
Other tests are being developed for use in the near future. The most
frightening of these is HAIR ANALYSIS. Already developed and ready for use,
the only thing standing in the way of widespread hair testing is the cost.
As we speak, technicians are hard at work developing a means of making it
less cost-prohibitive to employers. While it may be more dignified to give
up a strand of hair than a urine sample, be advised that hair analysis
testing has the capacity to detect any chemical you have ingested within the
last eight months (depending on the length of your hair).
Hair analysis is just the beginning, though. Looming in the future is
GENETIC TESTING. At the moment, genetic testing is primarily used by
scientists trying to determine the origins of certain illnesses, and on
fetuses (!) in an effort to find out what the chances are that they'll be
born with hereditary health handicaps. Testing on fetuses is not widespread
as yet, and being hotly debated since predisposition to any genetic order
does not guarantee that the child will actually develop that disorder. The
same is true for genetic testing on adults. Because you're genetically
predisposed to diabetes does not guarantee that you'll get it. However,
knowing that you're predisposed to diabetes might sway an employer to choose
another applicant over you in order to keep possible health insurance costs
down in the future. More horrible to contemplate are the other uses for
genetic testing : Weeding out prespective employees for racial
characteristics, mental makeup, or sexual tendencies. Don't forget that the
Nazis did the first genetic testing in order to create a super race, and
that's the shape of things to come as far as drug tests are concerned.
NARCS ON YOUR JOB?
"What about my rights?" you ask. Guess what -- you don't have very many
left. For all this talk about the 200th anniversary of the Bill of Rights,
the Fourth Amendment means next to nothing once you are in the private
employer's domain. (The rights of public service employees are better, but
we'll cover that later.) If you're like most Americans, you work for a
privately owned company. Once you walk through their doors, you're not
protected by the Bill of Rights. This means if you find out, as I myself
did, that they are recording and/or monitoring your phone calls or VDT
input, there is little you can do about it except ask them to stop. This is
only possible if you know it's going on. I was lucky, my employer was
unaware of the bugging as well, and when he found out he insisted it be
stopped. Not everyone is so lucky. The increased anxiety on the part of
employers concerning substance abuse in the workplace has increased
on-the-job surveillance. This canmean anything from monitoring and/or
recording phone calls and video display terminal input to undercover cops
infiltrating the workplace.
A former police detective who now heads a company that deal in undercover
operations and drug education explained to me how it works. "We go in and
we evaluate the situation as an independent source," he said. "Management
might have received anonymous tips, gotten complaints from other employees,
or maybe they've been finding paraphenalia out on the floor and all of a
sudden they start seeing increased absenteeism and low productivity
hampering the quality of their product. They suspect that something is
taking place that they can't see during day-to-day activities. So what we
do is provide a credible investigator, who then becomes the eyes and ears of
the corporation, recording everything he sees and hears."
These investigators spy on workers, taking notes on what they see going
on, report on those who they believe are involved, and compose a written
evaluation that confirms or denies the company's suspicions that there's a
drug problem within their walls. After approximately 90 days, a
determination is made as to how the company would like to handle the
situation. One of the questions surrounding these undercover operations is
whether all the information they turn over to the companies is strictly
related to illegal drug use.
An American Civil Liberties attorney has this to say on the topic of
undercover investigation in the workplace : "The practice is becoming more
and more common. It harkens back to company spies, Pinkertons, and now
in-store detectives. It's very problematic. It's not regulated by the
Constitution at all. It's a very dangerous practice and it has the same
characteristics as drug testing. Confidences you would share in the
workplace are not necessarily ones you would want your employer to overhear,
and although they say that they only give the employer drug-related
information, there's no way to know."
Anonymous tips and drug testing can also be used as aweapon against
unpopular employees. For instance, the ACLU recently represented several
employees of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Their supervisor was angry
at them for blowing the whistle on them. This plant has a drug hotline
where anyone could phone in an anonymous top against a fellow employee
accusing them of using drugs, and anyone reported was then immediately
called in for a drug test. These six "whistle blowers" were called in on the
hotline and subjected to drug tests. The ACLU quickly filed a complaint
with the Department of Labor which they ultimately won, but the whole
process took years.
"Those people basically lost their jobs, we think, because of their
whistle-blowing activity," added the ACLU attorney, "and it's easy to
imagine how it could be used to thwart a union organizing drive or something
like that...particularly in today's climate where if you're labeled as a
drug user, basically your life is over, that's it. It's such an incredible
stigma during the era of the war on drugs that it's a very powerful weapon
in the hands of management today."
Employees in the public sector (ie:government employees) are in better
shape than private sector employees because the government has to adhere to
the Bill of Rights and people who work for Uncle Sam are therefore protected
by the Fourth Amendment. This is changing as the rules are bent in the case
of public sector employees who are "responsible for public safety." In two
recent cases, the majority court held that urine tests are searches but, in
the case of these particular employees (customs guards and railroad workers)
testing was allowed without probable cause on the ground that their Fourth
Amendment rights were outweighed by the government's interest in maintaining
a drug-free workplace. [BA:thought the rights were inalienable...]
FIGHTING BACK
How can we be counted and make our voices heard?
First of all, bring the issues of drug testing and surveillance to the
attention of your union. These are issues that can be put on the table for
collective bargaining. Impress upon union leaders that privacy and freedom
in the workplace is equally important as pay raises and other benefits.
If you don't have a union, and 80 percent of American workers do not,
start one, or discreetly start a campaign and petition to stop bugging and
testing practices in your workplace. (Be careful. Remember:Big Brother is
watching.) Call the local chapter of the AFL/CIO to find out how to start a
union in your area.
Any time you see a story relating to these issues, take the time to write
letters to the editor of your local papers or magazines. You might inspire
them to investigate further into abuses and misuses of testing and bugging
by management.
You should be advised that seven states do have legislation that protects
the rights of employees and job applicants. These states are : Montana,
Iowa, Vermont, Minnesota, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. In these states
you cannot be tested without probable cause. Vermont's laws go even
further, citing that an employer cannot test at all unless they have
available to their employees a "bone fide rehabilitation program."
That's the good news. The bad news is the new bi-partisan bill called
the Borne-Hatch Bill that's being sold as a way to regulate lab standards.
What it really does is remove any threat of an employer from being sued by
an employee in the future. Already, most law suits brought by employees
against employers in relation to drug testing have been lost, but some have
been won. Removing that small threat will only open the glood gates for
more random testing. Worst of all it will supercede the state laws
mentioned before.
Write to your elected officials, and start a campaign to get everyone to
write and/or petition local officials. Fight the Borne-Hatch bill that's
threatening our cibil liberties.
Stay informed and active. Contact your local chapter of the American
Civil Liberities Union and ask how you can get involved with their Task
Force on Civil Liberties and receive their newsletters. Join NORML, and ask
for their drug testing literature. And join the Freedom Fighters. Work
with your local state chapter head to think of new ways to fight back.
Ultimately, drug testing is being used as an excuse to take away all of
our freedoms and create a chemical police state. If you and the people you
know don't stop it, who will?
(c)opied right from HIGH TIMES June 1990 Bloody Afterbirth/Toxic Shock
Freedom Fighters
211 East 43rd St.
New York, New York 10017
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