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Published by the Department of Public Education
American Civil Liberties Union
132 West 43rd Street.
New York, NY 10036
(212) 944-9800
To visit the ACLU gopher, try "gopher aclu.org 6601".
ACLU Briefing Paper Number 5
Drug Testing in the Workplace
There was a time in the United States when your business was also your
boss's business. At the turn of the century, company snooping was
pervasive and privacy almost nonexistent. Your boss had the right to
know who you lived with, what you drank, whether you went to church, or
to what political groups you belonged.
With the growth of the trade union movement and heightened awareness of
the importance of individual rights, American workers came to insist
that life off the job was their private affair not to be scrutinized by
employers. But major chinks have begun to appear in the wall that has
separated life on and off the job, largely due to the advent of new
technologies that make it possible for employers to monitor their
employees' off-duty activities. Today, millions of American workers
every year, in both the public and private sectors are subjected to
urinalysis drug tests as a condition of getting or keeping a job.
The American Civil Liberties Union opposes indiscriminate urine testing
because the process is both unfair and unnecessary. It is unfair to
force workers who are not even suspected of using drugs, and whose job
performance is satisfactory, to "prove" their innocence through a
degrading and uncertain procedure that violates personal privacy. Such
tests are unnecessary because they cannot detect impairment and, thus,
in no way enhance an employer's ability to evaluate or predict job
performance. Here are the ACLU's answers to some questions frequently
asked by the public about drug testing in the workplace.
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Don't employers have the right to expect their employees not to be
high on drugs on the job?
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Of course they do. Employers have the right to expect their employees
not to be high, stoned, drunk, or asleep. Job performance is the bottom
line: If you cannot do the work, employers have a legitimate reason for
firing you. But urine tests do not measure job performance. Even a
confirmed "positive" provides no evidence of present intoxication or
impairment; it merely indicates that a person may have taken a drug at
some time in the past.
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Can urine tests determine precisely when a particular drug was used?
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No. Urine tests cannot determine when a drug was used. they can only
detect the "metabolites," or inactive leftover traces of previously
ingested substances. For example, an employee who smokes marijuana on a
Saturday night may test positive the following Wednesday, long after the
drug has ceased to have any effect. In that case, what the employee did
on Saturday has nothing to do with his or her fitness to work on
Wednesday. At the same time, a worker can snort cocaine on the way to
work and test negative that same morning. That is because the cocaine
has not yet been metabolized and will, therefore, not show up in the
person's urine.
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If you don't use drugs, you have nothing to hide--so why
object to testing?
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Innocent people do have something to hide: their private life. The
"right to be left alone" is, in the words of the late Supreme Court
Justice Louis Brandeis "the most comprehensive of rights and the right
most valued by civilized men."
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          It is unfair to force workers who are not even suspected of
          using drugs to "prove" their innocence through a degrading
          and uncertain procedure that violates personal privacy.
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Analysis of a person's urine can disclose many details about that
person's private life other than drug use. It can tell an employer
whether an employee or job applicant is being treated for a heart
condition, depression, epilepsy or diabetes. It can also reveal whether
an employee is pregnant.
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Are drug tests reliable?
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No. The drug screens used by most companies are not reliable. These
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