The Arguments for and Against Drug Testing in the Work Place Essay

But by then a fellow worker may have lost an arm, a leg, an eye or a hand - a patient her own life. The aim of testing is to prevent mistakes, not to allocate blame after the event. It is unfair to force workers who are not even suspected of using drugs, and whose job performance is satisfactory, to "prove" their innocence through a degrading and uncertain procedure that violates personal privacy. Such tests are unnecessary because they cannot detect impairment and, thus, in no way enhance an employer's ability to evaluate or predict job performance (Perkinson 1997). Employers have the right to expect their employees not to be high, stoned, drunk,

The Arguments for 6 or asleep. Job performance is the bottom line: If an employee cannot do the work, employers have a legitimate reason for firing them. However, urine tests do not measure job performance. Even a confirmed "positive" provides no evidence of present intoxication or impairment; it merely indicates that a person may have taken a drug at some time in the past. Urine tests cannot determine when a drug was used, they can only detect the "metabolites," or inactive leftover traces of previously ingested substances. For example, an employee who smokes marijuana on a Saturday night may test positive the following Wednesday, long after the drug has ceased to have any effect. In that case, what the employee did on Saturday has nothing to do with