>>> Part 2 of 15...
 
5) Stopping and/or monitoring work-place drug testing is
everyone's problem -- both employers and employees must actively
resist the drug testing industry, or at least be concerned enough
to make sure that the industry plays fair and that the tests are
applied fairly.  (In this respect, NIDA officials should not own
drug testing companies[], The PDFA should be required to back its
claims with hard evidence[], more harmful drugs should be dealt
with more severely -- including legal drugs, etc.)
                      THE SO CALLED CRISIS
Former President George Bush once claimed that use of illicit
drugs cost society over sixty billion dollars annually.  It is
this claim that fueled the popular movement to install drug
testing in the public work-place.  However, the claim is false. 
The sixty billion dollar figure was arrived at from a study
done by the Research Triangle Institute, which tallied the
results of a survey of households.  The survey found that the
income of households in which any one member admitted having ever
used marijuana, whether it was every day for the last four years
or once in high school twenty years ago, was lower, on the
average, than the households in which people claimed to have
never used the drug.
The researchers, without considering external factors, defined
this as economic loss due to marijuana use.  Through a flimsy
chain of extrapolation, which included adding the estimated costs
of drug related crime, they arrived at a total figure of forty-
seven million dollars.
The Bush administration liked this statistic a whole lot, because
it supported the War on Drugs.  They added an adjustment for
inflation and other economic factors to get the sixty billion
dollar figure, and then publicized this figure widely.
What the Bush administration didn't say quite as loudly was that
the RTI study also showed *no* economic loss for current and
multi-drug users.  Does this mean that people who *quit* using
marijuana, or *don't* use other drugs along with marijuana, are
the real problem?  Of course not, but it does show that the RTI
study was flawed, and suggests that the whole estimate of drug-
use related cost was a fluke[1].  
Other studies which have purported to show that all drug users
are bad workers, or tend to be in bad health, have been routinely
shot down by the medical community[8][9][4][3][1][13].  Many of
these studies have ended up in our newspapers and magazines, and
as a result, Americans now actually believe that casual drug use
is a threat in the work-place[1][2][3], even though no such study
has been accepted by the scientific community.  It is also
unusual to note that not many studies have been done on
successful drug users, and that when one is, it rarely gets into
the daily papers, but remains in medical journals where only
doctors and medical students get to see it[13].
The media has shown a definite anti-drug bias in reporting these
studies, further warping the average American's assessment of the
actual situation of casual drug use[3].  To make matters worse,
several times the media has played up accidents which may or may
not have involved drugs as `caused by drug use'[13].  When an
accident occurs and the driver or pilot tests positive for drugs,
the newspapers will jump right on the story.  In almost all of
these cases, other reasons are found for the accident -- faulty
equipment, alcohol use, etc.[3]  In one case, the drug test which
showed a train driver to be using marijuana was a false positive! 
By the time these things are found out, though, the damage has
already been done.
From the standpoint of journalism, this reflects very poorly on
the American media, which stands accused of sensationalism.  From
the standpoint of business, this makes a lot of sense:  people
are a lot more likely to want to read a front-page article about
a train crash and how it might be the result of drug use.  They
are less likely to want to hear out a huge argument as to the
actual cause of the accident.  Since many people only read the
first few articles in any particular news story, (and many only
watch the news on television, or read the headlines and front
page) they have been left with the impression that casual drug
use represents some sort of huge crisis.
This impression has been communicated to their public officials
and representatives, who have tried to defeat the `drug problem'
through laws and programs.  In the case of the train driver
mentioned above, the hysteria surrounding the crash resulted in
the passing of an unprecedented budget for George Bush's Drug
War.
                          ----------
I would like to ``press pause'' on this discussion and pick it up
later, so that some of the other aspects of drug testing can be
discussed.  This topic is further discussed below.
 >>> Continued to next message...
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