Work Place Drug Testing
by John Fritz

In 2003 a Government survey estimated that alcohol and drug misuse costs UK industry in excess of £7 billion each year. A recent Institute of Personnel and Development survey suggests that up to 21% of the workforce uses drugs and that 25% of persons who seek help for a drug problem are employed.

While this demonstrates how widespread the problem has become, managers continue to accept substance misuse at work as an intractable part of every day life that’s best ignored.

The fact is that businesses without an adequate drug and alcohol policy are more likely to be vulnerable to the negative impacts of drug and alcohol misuse. Their employees are more likely to suffer increased accidents, absenteeism and impaired productivity. In turn these impacts may damage both staff morale and the company’s reputation. Moreover, the absence of a policy might unwittingly lead employers to breach health and safety legislation.

Under current occupational health and safety legislation, employers are obligated to minimise risks to their employees. The legal requirements that employers must comply with are as follows.

• The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 places a general duty on employers to ensure the health, safety and welfare of their employees as far as it is reasonably practicable.
  
  
• The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1992 adds the duty to assess the risks to the health and safety of employees associated with all the company’s activities. An employer could be liable to prosecution if they knowingly allow employees affected by alcohol or drugs to continue working when their behaviour places the employee or other colleagues at risk.
  
  
• The Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 makes it an offence to supply or possess specified drugs. Drugs are grouped into three classes and are classified by whether or not there is a medicinal use for them. It is an offence to knowingly allow your premises to be used for the use of illegal drugs.
  
  
• The Transport and Works Act 1992 makes it a criminal offence for workers to work on railways, tramways and other guided transport systems if their performance is impaired though alcohol or drug use. Operators of transport systems may be liable unless they exercise ‘due diligence’ to ensure that safety-critical members of staff are fit to carry out their duties.
  
  
• The Road Traffic Act 1998 makes it a criminal offence for anyone driving or in charge of a motor vehicle in any public place while unfit to drive through drink and drugs.
  
  
• The Railways and Transport Safety Act 2003 makes it an offence for a ship’s master, pilot, seaman or someone carrying out an ‘aviation function’ to be impaired through drink or drugs when carrying out their duties. Employers of such staff should take steps to ensure that their employees comply with these requirements.

Work place testing in the context of substance misuse policies

More organisations are now facing up to the legal, health and productivity risks associated with drug and alcohol use by introducing substance misuse policies.

The main aim of such policies is to prevent employees being impaired through alcohol or drugs while at work or while representing their organisation.

Drug testing should only be considered in the context of an overall substance misuse policy. Testing can be an effective way of monitoring the success of such a policy but the benefits have to be weighed up against employment law and data protection issues.

In particular, testing can be justified only if it is a measure proportionate to the risks that it is designed to counter and it should be no more intrusive to staff than is necessary in order to address these risks. A documented impact assessment should be carried out to show that the need for testing has been properly identified and its impact on employees properly considered.

Circumstances under which testing might be reasonably considered include those which will:

• Help a company better adhere to its statutory commitments
• Safeguard the health and safety of its employees
• Prevent loss of business performance or reputation

As a rule, testing should only be carried out for the purpose of detecting impairment in so far as it relates to the competency of an employee to perform a specific job and not simply to detect private illegal drug use. The exceptions to this are if drug use may substantially cause damage to a company’s reputation or if it could undermine the employer’s trust and confidence in the employee.

Testing can have a number of purposes, including:

• Pre-employment screening, where offers of employment are subject to passing a drug and alcohol test
  
  
• For cause testing, where a trained manager identifies apparent signs of impairment through drug or alcohol use
  
  
• Routine testing where the workforce are notified in advance of testing
  
  
• Random, unannounced testing used largely for employees in safety sensitive or business critical posts
  
  
• Post accident testing following an accident or incident where an employee is suspected of drink or drug related impairment

A substance misuse policy should be clear and unambiguous about what the rules and guidelines are so that no one can be in any doubt as to the consequences of breaching agreed standards. Where drug testing forms part of a policy, it should be clearly explained what the tests are for, when and how testing will take place, what information will be gathered and who will have access to that information. Policies must also ensure that information gathered on individuals remains highly confidential. Data from drug samples qualifies as sensitive personal data under the Data Protection Act. Accordingly, it must be obtained fairly and lawfully, be proportionate, be accurate, and be securely stored.

In all instances, an employee’s permission must be sought before a testing regime is introduced. Here, it can be helpful if a suitable testing regime and collection protocol is discussed at all levels within the company as part of the company’s initial evaluation process. Generally, successful policies are those that have the agreement and backing of the whole workforce and are drawn up following a thorough consultation process.

The process of policy implementation should include substance misuse awareness training for all employees along with training for managers to help them identify the signs and symptoms of drug misuse. Employees with a dependency problem should be encouraged to seek early advice and help.

Types of drug test

It is important to ensure that tests used for workplace testing are of a recognised quality and administered and interpreted by a properly trained and qualified person.

The main testing matrices for drugs are blood, urine, oral fluid and hair. Blood tests are expensive and invasive and require medically trained staff so are infrequently used. Urine, oral fluid and hair tests can be used in different circumstances depending on the information sought.

Hair testing is relatively expensive but analysis can provide a profile of drug use from one week up to approximately three months. This can be useful where evidence of a long-term history of abstinence is needed for example for pre-employment testing or in monitoring progress in the treatment of addiction.

Urine is the most established and researched test matrix and is considered the gold standard for drugs of abuse testing in terms of accuracy and reliability. Rapid points of care tests are commonly used in the first instance to screen out negative samples. Test results are available in minutes and only disputed positive tests need to be sent to a laboratory for confirmation and specific drug analysis. This makes the process much cheaper and the immediacy of negative results can substantially reduce donor anxiety.

A urine test shows a history for most drug groups of between one to four days. With cannabis this detection window can increase to approximately three weeks. 

Oral fluid testing has recently been introduced as an alternative or supplementary test matrix alongside urine. As with urine tests rapid point of care tests may be used as a screen out tool for negative samples, requiring only disputed positive results to be sent to a laboratory for confirmation. 

Oral fluid tests detect drugs that have been taken over the last 24 hours.  The main advantage of these tests is that no special facilities are required to carry out the test procedure. However oral fluid testing is less effective at detecting cannabis and benzodiazepine use and it is not always possible for donors to produce sufficient oral fluid for the test, particularly those abusing stimulants such as amphetamine and ecstasy.

The different detection windows of urine and oral tests make them better suited to different purposes. The longer window for urine tests makes this method most appropriate for pre-employment screening.

Use of oral fluid as the sole test matrix in routine or random testing means that donors need only abstain for a twenty-four hour period to be undetectable. The longer detection window for urine tests means that results may be more consistent with drug usage, but this gain should be weighed against the fact in most instances testing is not concerned with detecting private illegal drug use.

‘For cause’ or post incident testing can use a combination of oral and urine testing. A positive reading from an oral test by itself will only indicate that a drug or drugs have been taken in the last 24 hours or so. This is too long a window to make a reliable assessment about the donor’s likely impairment at the time of, or just before the test.

Drugs on average take two to six hours to appear in urine and half an hour or more to appear in oral fluid. When the two's tests are used simultaneously these variable delays can help narrow down the time at which drugs were consumed. If evidence of drugs appears in an oral fluid test but not in a urine test it is likely that they were taken within the last two hours suggesting that the donor may have been impaired at the time of incident.
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For further information about drugs testing contact us on or visit www.euromed.ltd.uk