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may include, but are not limited to:
■ Tardiness.
■ Negative impacts to job performance.
■ Poor decision making.
■ Loss of efficiency.
■ Theft.
■ Lower co-worker morale.
■ Increased interpersonal issues.
■ Interferences with attention and/or concentration.
■ Higher turnover rates.
■ Increased rates of disciplinary procedures.
It’s difficult to put a price on the impact of a drug user in the
workplace. Take the increased safety concerns to the user, other employees, and potential clients, and add in the aforementioned impacts such as lost work time due to lowered productivity, and it’s easy to see that even one drug user in a workplace can have a large impact on your bottom line as well as overall workplace safety.
The Future of Workplace Drug Testing
With new laws, such as those in New York, California, and Wash- ington, limiting an employer’s options in terms of testing for can- nabis, employers may find themselves wondering what the next step is. Do you drop cannabis entirely from your drug test panel and focus on other, less commonly used drugs? Or do you contin- ue testing for cannabis in a way that is generally permissible while also preserving the safety of your workplace?
Increasingly, employers are choosing to switch to test speci- mens that fit the needs of this new phase of workplace drug testing and legal cannabis. Impairment tests, looking at things such as eye movements, are increasing in popularity for employers that want to determine if an employer is impaired NOW rather than has used cannabis over the prior 30 days.
When looking for a specimen that both fits the legal needs of testing for cannabis in many states, as well as continues to support a safer workplace, look for a test specimen that has a short window of detection (the period of time during which a drug is detectable in the user’s system) and correlates with the window of impairment for cannabis (the amount of time post-ingestion where most cannabis users feel impairing effects). Additionally, look for a specimen, if not performing impairment testing, that tests for the parent drug rather than metabolites. This likely allows you to comply with more restric- tive state testing laws such as those in California or Washington.
More employers are switching to oral fluids, especially with the recent approval of oral fluid by the Department of Transpor- tation (DOT). It’s likely not unrelated that industry providers such as labs and Third-Party Administrators (TPAs) are saying that both urine (46 percent) and oral fluid (46 percent) will be the most commonly used specimens in the future, whereas in years past urine was considered the “gold standard” and future of workplace drug testing.
Legal in nearly all 50 states and the District of Columbia, oral fluid offers an easy, legally compliant solution for most employers, can be used for federally mandated positions, and is often com- bined with other testing methods to create a specific, customized drug and alcohol testing program. Oral fluid has high positivity rates, increasing workplace safety, and detects parent drug, mean- ing a positive oral fluid test correlates with recent use (within the past hours to days), rather than historic use.
With the rising popularity of cannabis and other drugs, some employers question if it is worth continuing to drug test, particularly for cannabis.
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While it may seem prudent to employers to eliminate cannabis from their panel in order to ease a perceived burden, employers who choose to do so are, in fact, opening themselves to a variety of poten- tial costly consequences. Federally mandated employers are required to continue testing for cannabis, no matter their state’s stance on the substance. To ensure a safe workplace in today’s environment, it is essential to choose a test specimen such as oral fluid that is legally compliant while offering the benefits of a drug-free workplace.
Katherine Miller is Senior Director of Compliance Services at The Cur- rent Consulting Group, LLC. She is a CAPM certified project manager and an expert in state drug testing laws. In addition to managing a vari- ety of internal services and key client relationships and projects, consult- ing on state law questions, and authoring articles, Miller manages and updates Current Compliance, the industry’s leading online subscription database service on all state laws related to workplace drug testing.
REFERENCES
1. “The 2023 Employer Drug Testing Sur vey.” The Current Consulting Group, LLC, 2023.
2. “Percentage of THC and CBD in Cannabis Samples Seized by the DEA, 1995-2021.” The National Institute on Drug Abuse, 21 Nov. 2022. tinyurl. com/5n8xthtj
3. “Key Substance Use and Mental Health Indicators in the United States: Results from the 2022 National Survey on Drug Use and Health.” SAMHSA, 13 Nov. 2023. tinyurl.com/y7xtrtbe
4. “Post-Accident Workforce Drug Positivity for Marijuana Reached 25-Year High in 2022, Quest Diagnostics Drug Testing Index Analysis Finds.” Quest Diagnostics, 18 May 2023. tinyurl.com/dsct6jfn
5. “60 percent of Americans battling drug or alcohol addictions also have jobs. Here are the professions with the highest rates of substance-use disorder.” Fortune, 4 Aug. 2023. tinyurl.com/2p8cwdk9
6. “Quest Diagnostics Drug Testing Index: Full year 2022 tables.” Quest Diagnostics, 2023. tinyurl.com/2593wndk
7. “Marijuana and public health.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 21 Sept. 2023. tinyurl.com/5crvbccn
8. “Drugs and Alcohol in the Workplace.” National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, Inc., 26 April 2015. tinyurl.com/42tbake4
9. “The Industry Drug Testing Survey.” The Current Consulting Group, LLC., 2023.
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