Cheating on Drug Tests
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 9:25 PM

A few days ago this story on methods of cheating on drug tests appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, and yesterday it was reprinted in the Sun-Times edition for people with short attention spans (that's the edition I have), Red Streak. The article claims that America hosts more than 40 million employment-related drug tests per year. (It doesn't say, but surely this must be yet another area in which America leads the world!) Less than 5% of these tests turn out positive. (The article somehow interprets the low percentage of positives as suggestive that most people aren't using drugs or cheating, but, well, that conclusion requires some further assumptions.) Of those tests that do turn out positive, more than 55% are positive for marijuana.

An accompanying article in Red Streak (I couldn't find it online) briefly recounts a story from a man who conducts drug tests on offshore oil platforms. The tester "said entire work crews have quit on the spot -- even in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico -- rather than submit to his test." It is nice to know there is still some backbone in America -- or at least just a bit offshore. How about some of that similar, New England spirit of independence, town workers of Seabrook, New Hampshire?

Labels: drugs, testing