Don’t employers have the right to run a safe and productive workplace?
Of course they do. If employees cannot do the work, employers have a legitimate reason for disciplining or dismissing them. But drug 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. Urine tests cannot determine when a drug was used. They can only detect the “metabolites,” or inactive, leftover traces of previously ingested substances. Drug testing can detect marijuana that was consumed even weeks before the test date. For example, an employee who smokes marijuana on a Saturday night may test positive the following Monday, 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 Monday. 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 metabol
