420
Founder
Until I tried my first federal drug crime case, I had never seen an illegal drug up close. I could not have differentiated between marijuana and tea leaves. I am not embarrassed by the naivete on this issue. I simply have no inclination to venture into the subculture of drugs it never even occurred to me.
As a drug na?ve citizen, I still find the trend towards mandatory, random drug testing in the workplace to be disturbing. Random drug tests mean just that. The workforce is targeted at random in the workplace and tested for controlled substances through urinalysis. The drug user and the drug na?ve are all caught in the same net.
The famous English jurist, Sir William Blackstone, opined that the power to regulate conduct should be used in such a manner as to create as little pointless imposition on personal liberty as possible. Nothing is more invasive of personal liberty than forcing all employees even those who have given no reason to suspect them of drug use to submit to random tests. All of us should be concerned by yet another imposition on our liberty.
Looking behind the justifications for testing, it appears that our medical community has latched onto a great money-making scheme by creating a furor over testing, but what does random testing achieve? As it is random there is no guarantee that the hard-core user will be caught. If you test three people out of 100, none of whom are users, and you leave the hard-core user on the job, then you have just achieved nothing more than filling the coffers of already rich medical organizations who conduct the tests. The workplace is not safer. The user is still there and is still a danger.
What is it with the use of illegal drugs that makes them so special? They are so special because selling testing to the public is easy to rationalize. Why not test for alcohol consumption? Let's have a breath test station at the door of every workplace to test for alcohol. After all, alcohol kills too. The difference is that alcohol consumption is legal and drugs are not. Little argument will exist for invading the person of an employee for a urine test for something that is illegal, but employees and employers may balk at testing for alcohol use.
Why not body fat tests? Body fat is dangerous. Obesity causes heart attacks, increased medical premiums, lost productivity. However, once again, food is not illegal and neither is being fat.
In the end the medical community has found a tremendous source of income that produces little or no guarantee, namely performing medical tests on healthy people under the guise of workplace safety and liability.
But why not test for drugs when they are illegal? If you do not use then you should not be concerned. Shouldn't we all do our part to detect illegal drug use? Maybe, but we should also be concerned when our government allows employers to step into a pseudo law enforcement role. Catching criminals is a police function. We would not let the government perform such invasions of privacy without proper justification and we should not allow our employers to do so either.
As individuals we have a certain level of liberty that is inherent in our natural rights as individuals. We should not falter in our defense of those rights and certainly should not surrender them lightly. We should fear the day that we simply submit to impositions on liberty by accepting the assurances of those who can profit from those impositions.
Source: Forum. The (ND)
Copyright: 2005 Forum Communications Co.
Contact: letters@forumcomm.com
Website: https://www.in-forum.com/
As a drug na?ve citizen, I still find the trend towards mandatory, random drug testing in the workplace to be disturbing. Random drug tests mean just that. The workforce is targeted at random in the workplace and tested for controlled substances through urinalysis. The drug user and the drug na?ve are all caught in the same net.
The famous English jurist, Sir William Blackstone, opined that the power to regulate conduct should be used in such a manner as to create as little pointless imposition on personal liberty as possible. Nothing is more invasive of personal liberty than forcing all employees even those who have given no reason to suspect them of drug use to submit to random tests. All of us should be concerned by yet another imposition on our liberty.
Looking behind the justifications for testing, it appears that our medical community has latched onto a great money-making scheme by creating a furor over testing, but what does random testing achieve? As it is random there is no guarantee that the hard-core user will be caught. If you test three people out of 100, none of whom are users, and you leave the hard-core user on the job, then you have just achieved nothing more than filling the coffers of already rich medical organizations who conduct the tests. The workplace is not safer. The user is still there and is still a danger.
What is it with the use of illegal drugs that makes them so special? They are so special because selling testing to the public is easy to rationalize. Why not test for alcohol consumption? Let's have a breath test station at the door of every workplace to test for alcohol. After all, alcohol kills too. The difference is that alcohol consumption is legal and drugs are not. Little argument will exist for invading the person of an employee for a urine test for something that is illegal, but employees and employers may balk at testing for alcohol use.
Why not body fat tests? Body fat is dangerous. Obesity causes heart attacks, increased medical premiums, lost productivity. However, once again, food is not illegal and neither is being fat.
In the end the medical community has found a tremendous source of income that produces little or no guarantee, namely performing medical tests on healthy people under the guise of workplace safety and liability.
But why not test for drugs when they are illegal? If you do not use then you should not be concerned. Shouldn't we all do our part to detect illegal drug use? Maybe, but we should also be concerned when our government allows employers to step into a pseudo law enforcement role. Catching criminals is a police function. We would not let the government perform such invasions of privacy without proper justification and we should not allow our employers to do so either.
As individuals we have a certain level of liberty that is inherent in our natural rights as individuals. We should not falter in our defense of those rights and certainly should not surrender them lightly. We should fear the day that we simply submit to impositions on liberty by accepting the assurances of those who can profit from those impositions.
Source: Forum. The (ND)
Copyright: 2005 Forum Communications Co.
Contact: letters@forumcomm.com
Website: https://www.in-forum.com/
