Growth Industry : Corporate World Takes to Drug Tests

Drug screening tests, which began in the military and spread to amateur and professional sports, are quickly moving into the corporate world.

A growing number of companies are requiring all new employees--and in some cases, current workers--to take a test to see if they have recently taken any illegal drug.

Critics charge, however, that the drug tests are an invasion of privacy because they judge what a person does on his own time rather than his performance on the job. Further, they allege that the tests are wrong on occasion, thereby denying jobs to people who may be drug-free.

Companies’ View

Corporate officials say the tests--typically, a urine sample included as part of a regular medical exam--screen out people whose drug use could cause accidents and reduce productivity. They also say the spread of drug testing may halt the spread of drug abuse in the general population.

“There are very few large companies that are not either doing this or seriously considering it,” said John Hunt, manager for personnel at Southern California Edison, which began testing all new employees soon after reports surfaced of the use of cocaine, marijuana and other drugs among construction workers at the company’s San Onofre nuclear plant.

“Our first concern was safety. We can’t have people in sensitive jobs or doing hazardous work who are under the influence of something,” Hunt said.

Medical experts differ sharply on the accuracy of the new tests. After a variety of well-publicized blunders in the military, lab directors say the screening procedures have been greatly improved, primarily through employing a second test on samples that contain illegal drugs.

But other experts say that while drug testing can be conducted with an extremely high rate of accuracy, drug screening today is a “growth industry” for independent labs that have no outside controls or regulation.

Labs Monitored

The federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta recently monitored the work of 13 highly regarded independent drug labs by secretly sending samples to be examined. The study, published April 26 in the Journal of the American Medical Assn., reported error rates as high as 69% and said the labs in general suffered from “serious shortcomings” in their quality controls.

“Quite a few labs are cutting corners. They all say they have quality controls, but after they get a contract, they cut corners to make money,” said Dr. Naresh Jain, professor of pharmacology and toxicology at the USC School of Medicine.

Jain said the “technology (of drug screening) has improved, but it still depends on the competence of the lab people. You have some very good labs and others where the results aren’t worth the paper they are printed on. I’d say more of them are in the bad category.”

UCLA Professor Ronald K. Siegel, a critic of mandatory drug testing, says recent research has shown that ingesting legal substances, ranging from aspirin to Valium and herbal teas, can create a “false positive” on screening tests for marijuana or cocaine. Several lab directors discounted this possibility and said that any such error should be caught through a second “confirmation test.”

Though many corporations say they have begun a mandatory drug screening program, few have wanted to speak openly about it or give the details of how it operates.

Unocal and the Atlantic Richfield Co., two oil giants based in Los Angeles, are testing new employees, but corporate officials say they do not want to discuss the program.

“We have had a testing program since 1982, and that’s all we care to discuss about it,” said Ed Spielman, a spokesman for Unocal. “I am not saying we have had any problems with it or not, because we are not going to discuss it.”

Arco has just begun its screening program. “At this point, we don’t feel comfortable talking about it yet,” said Al Greenstein, manager of communications. “It’s a new program, and there may be some bugs to work out.”

When asked why some Arco officials said they were unaware of the program, Greenstein said, “As far as I know, we’ve not circulated any flyers or memos on it, so the average Arco employee probably doesn’t know about it.”

Rockwell International, the aerospace and defense contractor, says it has been testing employees in some of its divisions and will expand the program to the entire corporation beginning Thursday. Other large firms, including Southern California Gas Co. and the Los Angeles Times, say they are leaning toward beginning a program of pre-employment testing.

Process Detailed

Since January, 1984, new job applicants at Edison have been given a urine test that screens for 42 illegal drugs. Hunt explained the process:

“The test covers everyone (applying for a job). You have to sign a release form that permits the medical department to tell us the results. If it comes back positive, you are notified something was found in your system. If it’s marijuana, you are precluded from reapplying for a year. If it is cocaine, you are precluded for five years from reapplying. If they (applicants) say it’s untrue, they can return in three days and we run a second screen using a different technique.”

The pre-employment test does not include a test for alcohol, which many employers say remains a more serious corporate problem than illegal drugs.

At Edison, current employees who are “exhibiting aberrant behavior that affects their job” can also be ordered to undergo a drug or alcohol test, Hunt said, adding that these tests are administered infrequently. They can, however, result in a suspension from work, he said.

“It’s an image thing, too. Our people are going into the homes of customers, doing potentially hazardous work,” Hunt said.

Percentage of Rejections

Since January, 1984, 13% of Edison’s applicants have been denied jobs because of the new tests, Hunt said. “It has accomplished what we wanted to accomplish. We’ve caught the heavy or relatively frequent users of drugs. We also get the social users of marijuana too, but that is an illegal substance. Marijuana is probably about 95% of what we have caught so far,” he said.

Other lab directors say companies are screening out between 12% and 20% of job applicants through drug testing.

“I have seen figures as high as 45% (of applicants failing the tests), but then the word gets around and you see a dramatic reduction,” said Marnie Verbofsky, president of a San Fernando Valley lab which does drug testing under contract with several large Southern California firms. “I’d say that 18% or 20% is common. If you’re a company with 20% of your people working at reduced productivity, you have a real problem,” she said.

Verbofsky spoke on condition that her lab and its clients remain unidentified.

The drug users among the work force tend to be absent more often, are more costly to the company’s health plan and are responsible for most of the thefts of company property, said Dr. Willard Christiansen, an industrial medical specialist who has worked with oil and agricultural firms in Bakersfield.

“I think companies have realized how much drug abuse is costing them and decided they are not going to put up with it,” Christiansen said. “I would guess that within two years, pre-employment drug screening will be done by just about every major employer and a lot of smaller companies as well.”

Marijuana Users

Most companies say they are detecting mostly marijuana users.

“Marijuana is the easiest drug to identify because it stays so long in the body,” Verbofsky said. Lab officials say that the residue of marijuana can be detected as long as 30 days after its use, while other illegal substances disappear from the body within several days.

According to the national household survey conducted in 1982 by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, 64% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 25 said they had tried marijuana and 27% said they had used it in the past month. Among those 26 or older, 23% said they had tried marijuana and 7% said they had used it in the past month.

Cocaine had been tried by 28% of the 18- to 25-year-olds and used by 7% in the last month. Among those over 25, 9% said they had tried cocaine and 1% said they had used it in the past month.

Beatrice Rouse, project director for the national survey, said many Americans also admitted to using a variety of illegal stimulants and sedatives. In total, 28% of the younger group said they had tried such an illegal drug and 7% used one last month, she said.

But alcohol remains more popular than illegal drugs. Among the younger age group, 68% said they had used alcohol within the past month, while 57% of those over age 25 said the same.

Lab officials and corporate medical directors said the widespread adoption of drug screening may reduce those figures.

‘Not a Witch Hunt’

“I think most companies see it as a deterrent, not a witch hunt,” Verbofsky said. She added that her lab does a separate test on all samples that show the presence of an illegal substance.

“We only report it if both come out positive,” she said.

Despite the test results, many disagree with the findings, she said. “It’s disease of denial. We get: ‘I only had two beers, I was sitting in a car where everyone was smoking (marijuana) and the windows were rolled up, or as one young lady told us, it was sexually transmitted.’ ”

Many toxicologists now say that the second excuse--being around others who smoke marijuana--is plausible. In lab tests, simply breathing marijuana smoke has been shown to register a “positive” on urine tests.

In a recent hearing before the Assembly Labor and Employment Committee in Sacramento, railroad union officials told of the case of a young woman, who, upon gaining a promotion, was required to take a drug test. It showed she had “a foreign substance” in her system and she was fired, according to George Falltrick, regional legislative director for the union.

‘Panic Response’

But the woman said she did not drink or smoke, although her boyfriend smoked marijuana. After taking four tests on her own, which showed no drugs in her system, the company agreed to rehire the woman, Falltrick said.

“That’s the problem with these tests in general. You do get false positives. They (tests) also measure what you have been exposed to, not whether you are impaired on the job,” said Spiegel, the UCLA professor who contends that a variety of legal substances can create “false positives” on standard urine tests. The recent surge in random drug testing, he said, is “a panic response to society’s inability to control the drug problem.”

Though civil liberties attorneys and union officials have fought cases where employees have lost jobs or promotions because of drug tests, they say they know of no lawsuits involving people who were denied a job because of a drug test.

Attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union say they oppose random drug testing, but add that they lack a legal basis or a precedent for fighting the practice in court.

“In the absence of a probable cause, we think these tests violate the constitutional right of privacy and freedom from search and seizure,” said Glenn Rothner, a Los Angeles attorney who has worked on several drug-related cases for the ACLU. “But it’s very difficult to challenge private companies. We’re still grasping for a legal theory to challenge them.”

Rothner and other civil liberties attorneys say they do not dispute an employer’s right to deal harshly with a worker who is intoxicated or under the influence of drugs while on the job.

“An employee under the influence of drugs can be a danger to himself and others. They should crack down on that,” Rothner said.

Assemblyman Johan Klehs (D-San Leandro) is sponsoring legislation to put tighter controls on drug testing. “The question is, should you be fired on Tuesday for having had some marijuana on Friday night,” he said, adding that he had no answer to his own question.

“I don’t think anyone condones drug or alcohol abuse, but we are concerned that some employers are using these tests capriciously,” he said.

Some medical experts said they were concerned that an unknown number of people may be denied a job based on an inaccurate drug test.

“They (job applicants) have no way of refuting it. The lab usually keeps the sample, so how do you disprove it?” said Dr. Jess Bromley, medical director of a treatment center in Hayward and the president of the California Society for the Treatment of Alcohol and Other Drug Dependency. At Klehs’s request, Bromley is working with a panel of doctors to draw up new quality control standards for labs that do drug screening.

‘Confirmation Tests’

Drug labs should not only be required to do routine “confirmation tests” on all positive samples, but should also undergo periodic testing by outside technicians, according to doctors at UCLA and the County-USC Medical Center.

“Blind testing is the only way to ensure that you are getting valid results,” said Jain, the USC professor who works with the Rancho Los Amigos drug treatment clinic in Downey. Under a “blind testing” procedure, spiked drug samples would be sent to a lab on occasion to check to see that they are being tested properly.

“Right now, there are no real protections for people and no standards for labs,” Assemblyman Klehs said. He said his legislation will not seek to ban random testing.

“We just want to make sure these are valid, quality tests, because if they come out positive you are dealing with a person’s life,” Klehs said.