Aug 30

Random Substance Misuse Tests

Prompted by a demand to provide well-being, health and safety of employees, employee alcohol and drug screening has come to be more and more common across England and Wales. However, there still persist a variety of misunderstandings surrounding the strategy, that can most likely produce concern amongst the staff being tested.

Random Substance Misuse Tests – So, where is the danger?

Lots of individuals estimate that the impact of abused drugs within the modern workplace is a minor issue. Each and every one of us has taken notice of Christmas time drink-driving TV advertisements and as a consequence, recognise that drug driving and drink-driving is dangerous, so can’t we rely upon everyday people’s judgement? The sad thing is, a staggering half of all roadside and industrial fatalities in the UK relate to alcohol, illicit drugs, or both together. Modern studies prove that well over 70 % of illicit drug abusers are in full-time work, suggesting that the typical illegal drug misuser is, effectively, the average member of staff. Recent Home Office reports estimate the number of 16 to 29-year-olds that have misused illegal drugs within the previous 12 months at just over fifty percent of that age range. In light of this fact, you cannot treat this as someone else’s concern, it involves each and every industrial environment. While the occasional use of illicit substances doesn’t automatically suggest irresponsibility within the workplace, it does substantially magnify the likelihood of accidents, attendance and punctuality problems, a reduction in productivity, damage to workplace equipment, being sued and a raised turnover of personnel.

Random Substance Misuse Tests – So what should we do? Isn’t employee drug and alcohol testing operationally disruptive?

Numerous organizations only conduct an employee drug screen in response to an industrial accident, an incident, or if they have reasonable cause for concern that a member of the workforce may be unsafe for duty. As a result of the large cross section of prospective dangers within heavy industrial work environments, many employers judge it to be completely logical to conduct diagnostic testing on such occasions, as a measure to prevent them occurring again.

On the other hand, random workplace drug testing brings workplace testing to the next level, where a predetermined sample of the personnel is chosen at random to produce a sample. This may sound intrusive, though it is pretty normal for only five percent of the workforce to be tested up to once every year. This is the same as just one in 20 people being drug tested, or else, as a member of staff, your chance of being subject to a test would likely be once every 20 years. Incredibly, this style of marginal screening has been confirmed to lower failure rates from as much as 46% down to a low of 2% in as little as just a handful of months. This indicates that the typical drug user present in the workplace is not addicted, but is merely making choices about their lifestyle which could be adjusted toward a better conclusion.

Random Substance Misuse Tests. Is this often perceived to be an infringement of freedoms?

Although some individuals within the company might be initially resistant to the possibility of screening, the majority perceive that this is being performed in order to underpin the basic safety of all the people throughout the company. Provided the amount of on-site drug testing is proportional to the dangers within the workplace and doesn’t especially disrupt staff time outside of work, it doesn’t technically represent a danger to staff human rights. In the United States, beyond 98% of the most successful 1000 organisations drug screen their work force without any problems.

Who says there is any risk while experimenting with illegal drugs outside of your job?

Quite a few illicit drugs have actually established a softer image as a consequence of their frequent mentions throughout countrywide television, radio and newspapers. In reality, expressions such as “recreational cocaine use” are responsible for a significant amount of harm due to it downplaying the dangers to impressionable young people. For numerous people, powdered cocaine is much more habit-forming than heroin and can’t be used on a recreational basis without significant risk of dependency. Addiction aside, cocaine purity has dropped from a typical 45% purity in 2004 to a low of roughly twenty five percent purity as of 2010 (with the purity of cocaine at an all-time low of 9 percent being reported). Worryingly, the chemicals that dealers use to bulk out the cocaine can be anything from local anaesthetics, cancer-causing chemicals, dog worming agents, all the way through to to insecticides. The reality is that you can certainly never rely upon a drug dealer.

Even drugs generally deemed to be soft drugs nonetheless carry risks. Right now in United Kingdom, a whopping 92% of men and women accepted for treatment for mental health issues are regular users of cannabis. bearing this in mind, workplace drug screening seriously possesses the potential to deal with wider antisocial and mental health concerns as it becomes commonplace.

For more information on workplace drug testing as well as home drug testing kits, stop by www.drug-aware.com

Information on the author: Christopher Evans is the Technical Director of Drug-Aware Ltd, a provider of Random Substance Misuse Tests, drugs and alcohol screening equipment, lab services along with drugs awareness training. He has educated literally thousands of delegates across hundreds of businesses, the HM Prison Service, the British police and hospitals and GP surgeries across the country.

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