Substance Misuse Tests At Work
Motivated by a desire to ensure health, safety and well-being of workers, random drugs and alcohol screening has become more and more common throughout Britain. Nonetheless, there still persist a significant number of misunderstandings relating to the system, which may trigger worry among the staff subject to testing.
Substance Misuse Tests At Work – Exactly where is the hazard?
A significant proportion of the population get the idea that the influence of street drugs within the average workplace is a trivial issue. Everyone has seen Christmas time drink-driving TV campaigns and as a result, appreciate that drink-driving and drug-driving is dangerous, so shouldn’t we be able to depend on the general public’s judgement? Sorry to say, as many as fifty percent of all workplace and roadside fatalities across Great Britain involve alcohol, illegal drugs, or a combination of both. Up-to-date statistics show that beyond 70% of illicit drug users are in full-time work, indicating that the average substance abuser is, in effect, the typical employee. Up-to-date Home Office figures estimate the volume of 16 to 29-year-olds that have indulged in drugs throughout the last 12 months at just over 50%. So, this should not be seen as somebody else’s problem, because it affects almost every industrial environment. While the consumption of narcotics doesn’t necessarily suggest risk-taking and irresponsible attitudes within the business, it does significantly increase the likelihood of accidents and incidents, attendance issues and absenteeism, a drop in productivity, damage to machinery and wasted materials, litigation and a higher turnover of workforce.
Substance Misuse Tests At Work – What companies do? Isn’t random drug screening difficult to do?
Many organizations only administer a workplace drug test in the event of an accident, a near miss or incident, or in the event that they have reasonable cause for concern that a member of the workforce could be unfit or unsafe for active duty. On account of the wide range of possible risks found at heavy industrial workplaces, numerous managers assume it to be entirely prudent to perform screening on such occasions, as a way to prevent them from happening in future.
However, random employee drug testing takes the screening process to the next degree, where a predetermined percentage of the workforce is randomly selected to provide a sample of breath and/or urine. This could be seen as a little invasive, however, it is very commonplace for just 5% of the staff to be drug tested up to once per 12 month period. This means that just one in 20 people being screened, in other words, as a member of staff, your odds of being tested would be just once every 20 years. As amazing as it sounds, such minimal screening has already been demonstrated to decrease positivity rates from as much as forty six percent down to as low as only 2% in only a handful of months. This hints at the fact that the run of the mill drug misuser present in the average company is not addicted and unable to change, but is just simply making decisions about their lifestyle which may be reshaped towards a more agreeable conclusion.
Substance Misuse Tests At Work. Is this often seen as an invasion of an individuals’ human rights?
While a few individuals within the company may be initially resistant to the prospect of on-site drug screening, most are aware that this will be carried out in order to assure the health and safety of everybody throughout the working environment. Provided that the extent of diagnostic testing is comparable to the risks inside the business and does not deliberately interfere with employee life outside of work, it will not pose a threat to employee human rights. Within the US, more than ninety eight percent of the leading 1000 corporations drug test their members of staff without any issues.
Where is the harm while experimenting with drugs outside of your job?
Plenty of drugs have recently acquired a less dangerous image as a consequence of their continual exposure in the country’s media. Without a doubt, expressions such as “recreational cocaine use” cause a great amount of harm due to it downplaying the dangers to people. For a large amount of teenagers, snorting cocaine is more habit forming than heroin and, as a result can’t be used recreationally without having substantial threat of addiction. Addiction aside, the level of cocaine purity has fallen from an average forty five percent purity in 2004 down to just 25 percent purity as of 2010 (with the purity of cocaine at an all-time low of 9 percent reported). Alarmingly, the added cutting agents that dealers use to add mass to the cocaine can be anything from dangerous anaesthetics, cancer-causing chemicals, animal worming agents, through to cockroach insecticide. The underlying message is you should never ever rely on a drug dealer.
Indeed, drugs typically deemed soft drugs frequently still carry dangers. Presently in United Kingdom, a frightening 92% of patients accepted for therapy for mental health problems are regular users of cannabis. With this in mind, on-site drug screening definitely possesses the ability to tackle wider antisocial and mental health problems when it becomes more common.
Discover more about company drugs and alcohol policies and also home drug testing kits, check out www.drug-aware.com
Author biography: Christopher Evans is the Technical Director of Drug-Aware Ltd, a provider of Substance Misuse Tests At Work, alcohol and drug test kits, lab services and alcohol and drug awareness training. He has trained literally thousands of delegates across hundreds of businesses, Her Majesty’s Prison Service, the British police and hospitals and mental health units across the UK.
