Are Your Drivers Drug Free?
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The government says 13% of highways deaths each year are caused by trucks, buses or other types of commercial carriers. Illegal drug use is not said to be a top cause of such accidents, but there is no doubt that using drugs such as marijuana, cocaine and heroin while driving is extremely dangerous. To better safeguard the roads, the government has required commercial drivers to submit urine samples for testing since 1988.
But how easy is it for an illegal drug user to defeat such tests? A Google search for “beat drug tests” returns nearly 3 million hits. Web sites make brazen promises such as “Have a drug test coming up? Don’t worry!” while offering advice for fooling testing facilities and selling adulterants to mask drug use undetectable. The promises aren’t empty.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, recently sent undercover agents to 24 drug testing facilities and found that 22 did not follow federal protocols to ensure that there was no cheating. Agents found they could use phony IDs (allowing someone else to take a drug test for the intended driver), adulterate urines samples, swap urine samples and otherwise elude tests. This raises substantial legal and moral liability questions for companies thinking they are sending drug-free drivers onto the roads — and any employer who requires drug tests for employees should wonder about the efficacy of the results.