39 Is urine testing for marijuana use as a terms of employment a good idea? I want to make sure my business is run safely.
Description
This article is from the Hemp / Cannabis / Marijuana FAQ, by Brian S. Julin verdant@twain.ucs.umass.edu with numerous contributions by others.
39 Is urine testing for marijuana use as a terms of employment a good idea? I want to make sure my business is run safely.
No! Some of your most brilliant, hard working, and
reliable employees are marijuana users. When you drug test,
you put all marijuana users in the same place as the abusers
-- the unemployment line. Drug testing is bad for business.
(Not to mention it is an invasion of privacy.) If a worker
has a drug problem, you can tell by testing how well he does
his job. Firing *all* the drug users who work for you will
hurt your business, costs money, and will get people very
mad at you -- and for what? There isn't even any hard
evidence that marijuana users have more accidents or health
problems.
Your employees will probably resent being drug tested; drug
testing allows an employer to govern the actions of an
employee in his off time -- even when these actions do not
effect his job performance. (As told above, marijuana drug
tests do not test whether a person is `high'. They test
whether or not they have used in the last few weeks.)
Asking employees to urinate in a plastic cup every month is
not a good way to make them feel like part of the business,
or make friends, either. There is growing concern about
drug tests, sometimes because they misfire and accuse the
wrong person, but mostly because they might be used to find
out other confidential information about an employee. Legal
professionals are beginning to question whether they are
even constitutional.
``Applicant Testing For Drug Use A Policy and Legal Inquiry '' by
Jonathan V. Holtzman in ``William and Mary Law Review'' Vol. 33 pp.
47-93. pub., 1991.
Continue to:
My Books
