Two reasons are most often cited
in support of drug testing in the work place or in schools: safety and
performance. Increasingly, the safety argument does not hold up in light
of random drug testing in business environments and school’s
extracurricular programs. Likewise, if job performance is at issue, it
seems more pertinent to critique employee performance quality directly,
rather than scrutinize residual substances in one’s hair, revealing
what one smoked 90 days previous.
Drug testing not only
violates one’s feelings of privacy, but it also violates an individual’s
Constitutional protection from unreasonable searches, afforded by the
Fourth Amendment. In addition, drug testing also assumes guilt until one
is proven innocent, in direct contrast to the explicit rights granted by
most judicial systems in the world.
The Fifth Amendment is meant to protect one from
self-incrimination; however, drug testing necessitates that one’s own
body be used as witness against oneself. Further, cataloguing the
substances detected in one’s urine or blood is an invasion of patient
confidentiality, by allowing one’s boss or teacher to know what
prescription drugs one taking as well as any illicit substances.
Admittedly, many safety sensitive jobs, such as public
transport services, do need to ensure that their employees are not
endangering the lives of the many others; however, in private sector
jobs, testing has become a power play on the part of employers. Drug
testing alerts an employer to their employee’s off-the-clock
activities, and allows them total jurisdiction over an employee’s
cognitive liberty choices. This practice has led to a growing acceptance
that employers have a right to monitor and control their employees on
and off the job. Even when no impairment is detectable on the job,
employers are demanding to know and thereby control what individuals use
to relax with or to alter their consciousness on weekends. As a personal
privacy issue, this is also an issue with grave repercussions for
cognitive liberty.
Resources
ACLU
Legislative Briefing Kit on Drug Testing
The ACLU’s informative briefing on drug testing in
the work place.
ACLU
Report: "Drug Testing a Bad Investment (1999)
ACLU report filled with informative statistics showing the extent and
cost of workplace drug testing.
Board of Education v. Earls
On June 20, 2002, the US Supreme Court ruled that public school students
who wish to participate in extracurricular activities may
constitutionally be drug tested without suspicion.
The Definitive List of Companies that Drug Test
A comprehensive database of companies that drug test.
Search by company name or state, or add a company to the list.
Drug Testing Information by Erowid
Drug Testing News
Aggregates news articles and company announcements related to drug
testing
Ecstasy and Narco Hair Testing
by Richard Glen Boire, Esq.,
Journal of Cognitive Liberties, Volume 1, No.3
Non-Testers
List
A consumers guide to companies that do NOT drug test.
If you would like to expound on any of these issues or suggest
additional resources, please contact us at
info@cognitiveliberty.org.
