By Marianne Costantinou
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
So, you're looking for a job, one of the zillion workers who
got the pink slip in recent months since the boom went bust.
Or you're a recent graduate, about to get a full-time job for
the first time. Or you're sick of your old job - the place has
gotten too corporate, management is starting job evaluations
or some other type of torture, you feel unappreciated and
underpaid - and you just want out.
So, you get your resume polished, hustle up some references
and head out into the proverbial job market with your
proverbial hat in hand. Better save the other hand for forking
over an all-too-real cup of urine. Yours.
Drug testing. It's here and it's big.
"Drug testing is by far the norm," says a proponent, Mark A.
de Bernardo, head of the Institute for a Drug-Free Workplace
in Washington, D.C., a nonprofit coalition of 120 major
employers from across the country, and a director of San
Francisco's Littler Mendelson, an employment law firm that
claims to be the nation's biggest. "Anybody getting out of
high school and college or switching jobs should expect to be
drug tested."
"Many workers now do it without thinking twice," says Ethan
Nadelmann, head of the Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy
Foundation in New York City, which advocates for drug policy
reform, including an end to drug testing. "In some respects,
drug testing is rapidly becoming as much a national tradition
as mom and apple pie."
And if you don't pass the drug test - no matter how smart you
are, how hard- working, how experienced, how fab your
references, how downright likable you are - you won't get the
job.
That's true even here in so-called Mellow California and the
liberal Bay Area, historically in the vanguard when it comes
to drug experimentation and tolerance, both culturally and
legally. If anything, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in May
that reaffirmed the illegality of pot - even the medicinal
marijuana that was championed in the state's Proposition 215 -
shows how strong the anti-drug sentiment still is in the
country.
Little wonder, then, that drug testing has become part of the
typical job application, with millions of wannabe workers
tested each year. Most often it's a urine test, but even
strands of hair, a few drops of saliva, a vial of blood or a
week's worth of sweat on a skin patch are being demanded to
check for drugs in your system, from pot to the hard stuff.
The trend, now in its 15th year, has spawned a $5.9 -billion
industry in drug-testing labs, a burgeoning underground
economy in guerrilla counter-labs and mom-and- pop Web sites
that peddle products that swear to fake-out the tests, some
two-dozen state laws, and a slew of court cases challenging
the drug-test habit on privacy and Fourth Amendment issues.
What happened?
One Cup at a Time
At first, only the military did drug testing, and civilians
were pretty much spared the need to pee in a cup to impress
the boss. But then along came President Ronald Reagan and all
that 1980s chatter to "Just Say No." Middle America was
snorting coke up the ying-yang, drug hysteria was in full
swing and the War on Drugs was turning into another Vietnam.
Enter Reagan's Executive Order 12564, which made drug
abstinence - on and off-duty - a condition of federal
employment. Reagan's rule set guidelines for drug-testing
programs. The Pandora's Box was now officially open. The war
on drugs was gonna be fought on the home front, in corporate
bathrooms, one pee cup at a time.
It wasn't long before everyone was jumping on the bandwagon.
In 1988, Congress passed the Drug Free Workplace Act, which
said that any company that wanted a lucrative federal contract
had better test its workers for drugs. States dangled similar
carrots. A few years later, in 1991, Congress got into the
drug-testing act again, requiring drug tests - including
random tests - for anybody in safety-sensitive positions, like
airline pilots, truck drivers, train and bus conductors.
Meanwhile, the drug-testing craze spread into other sectors.
School athletes, welfare recipients, folks on probation or
parole - the kinds of people authority figures wanted to keep
tabs on - were suddenly being ordered to take drug tests to
maintain their privileges.
But by far, the widest spread was in the private work sector,
especially as a condition of getting hired. In the first
decade since Reagan's order, drug testing was up 277 percent,
says the American Civil Liberties Union, which opposes the
practice. Though top executives typically get to bypass that
step in the job interview, companies that require drug testing
usually require it of everyone else who wants to work there,
according to experts, whether blue- collar or white-collar.
That means assembly-line workers and secretaries. Computer
analysts and bankers. Salesclerks and even the guy bagging
groceries at the neighborhood supermarket.
These days, companies that test for drugs are a who's who of
big business in every industry. General Motors tests for
drugs. So does Bank of America, at least sometimes. Intel.
Wal-Mart. Anheuser-Busch. Safeway. The San Francisco
Chronicle. Home Depot and Ikea even have signs on their doors
trumpeting that they have a drug-free workplace.
At first, drug testing caused a stir, with civil rights
advocates and labor unions and editorials lambasting the
perceived invasion of privacy. Lawsuits led to court cases
and, in some states, some legislative curbs. In California,
the State Supreme Court has frowned on drug testing on current
employees, either as random tests or as requirements for job
promotions. In 1986, San Francisco became the nation's first
city to ban random testing outright. But across the state,
including San Francisco, workers in safety-sensitive jobs like
transportation are still subjected to the random testing
required in the federal Department of Transportation
guidelines. And there's no statewide or city ban on testing
prospective hires, the belief being that the applicant has the
freedom to choose not to apply for the job.
But even with some legal curbs, drug testing has still quietly
mushroomed.
All told, 67 percent of the nation's largest companies test
their employees or applicants for drugs, according to a 2001
survey by the American Management Association, a New York
consulting firm that claims to have 7,000 corporate clients
representing one-fourth of the U.S. workforce. And though the
percentage of companies who test is down from its peak - 81
percent in 1996 - it still means that each year, millions of
workers are giving more than just their best effort to the
job.
Poppy Bagels Not an Excuse
The result is that drug testing is big business. Just one
drug-testing company, SmithKline Beecham, now called
GlaxoSmithKline, did 24 million drug tests in a decade, from
1988 to 1998, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
Though one of the nation's largest labs, they're hardly alone
in what Standard & Poor's values as a $5.9 billion industry.
The Drug & Alcohol Testing Industry Association (DATIA), based
in Washington D.C., has 1,100 members, including drug labs,
collection facilities and equipment makers. And its membership
roster, says its executive director, Laura Norfolk, "is just
the tip of the iceberg."
Two firms - PharmChem, a giant urine-testing lab which was
based in Menlo Park until June, when it relocated to Texas,
and Psychemedics, the nation's leading hair-testing facility,
based in Culver City (Los Angeles County) - alone do $60
million in business.
Urine tests, the most popular, cost an average of $20 to $25
per sample. Hair, the latest fad because it can track a longer
history of drug use, costs about $50.
Even drug-test opponents admit that the technology these days
makes a false positive reading rare. Gone are the days when a
test positive for heroin, for example, could theoretically be
blamed on eating a couple of poppy seed bagels.
At the minimum, each sample is tested for what is called the
Big Five: pot, cocaine (including crack), methamphetamines
(including its cousins, amphetamines and Ecstasy), PCP (also
known as angel dust), and opiates (like heroin and morphine).
Employers don't usually ask for the sample to be tested for
prescription drugs, drug labs say. They also don't typically
screen for alcohol or cigarette use, since they are legal.
A urine test can detect the residue, called metabolites, of
hard-core drugs up to about 72 hours after use, but heavy pot
users are usually tagged with the telltale THC chemical in
their system for as much as three to four weeks. That means
pot users are more likely to get caught than hard-core heroin
or cocaine addicts.
With hair tests, drug labs claim that the hair shafts of a
60-strand, 1.5- inch sample that's snipped close to the scalp
can trace drug use going back three months. And in case the
job applicant is bald or decides to get a crew cut before the
drug test, the hair can be snipped from another part of the
body. And that doesn't mean your knuckles.
Because false positives can't be counted on, wannabe workers
who do drugs try to outfox the tests. The most common way is
to quit the drugs cold turkey as soon as they know they're
facing a drug test, and then drink gallons and gallons of
water for days before the test, hoping to flush the
metabolites from their system. But many turn to a slew of
companies they find advertised in High Times magazine or on
the Internet. Each company claims to sell just the right
product that will come to the rescue and help land that job.
With hilarious names and Web sites - www. urineluck.com,
www.testingclean. com, www.passyourdrugtest.com,
www.ezklean.com - these companies sell adulterants such as
nitrites and bleach, diuretics, synthetic urine, chemically
treated shampoos, herbal concoctions and a slew of other
products.
Naturally, drug testing labs pooh-pooh the saboteurs' claims.
But that still doesn't stop them from checking out High Times
and scouring the Internet, and buying the products to test
them out in their labs - just in case.
"You look at High Times when you want to know what the other
side's thinking," says Ray Kelly, an Oakland forensic
toxicologist who for seven years ran the urine and hair
testing lab at Associate Pathologists Laboratories in Las
Vegas. "In the chess game of drug testing, when they make a
move, we have to respond to a move."
"We change and improve our formulas every six to 12 months to
stay ahead of the labs," says Kevin Pressler, marketing
manager of Cincinnati's urineluck. com, whose 10 products each
sell for $32. "It's an inevitable cat-and-mouse game."
Counter-labs like urineluck.com have to keep changing their
secret ingredients because once the drug labs spot them, they
test for the new chemicals. Alas for the worker wannabe if
adulterants or any sign of tampering is found in the sample:
Drug labs say they automatically mark the sample as coming up
positive for drugs - even if the only evidence is the
attempted camouflage.
Good for America
Against this backdrop, two surveys suggest it's all much ado
about nothing. For starters, the National Academy of Sciences
concluded in 1994, after a three-year study, that there was no
scientific evidence that drug tests ensure safety and
productivity on the job. Secondly, companies who test for
drugs seem to be going on blind faith that the tests live up
to their goals. In 1996, the American Management Association,
a pro-employer group, asked if companies had any "statistical
evidence" that drug tests had an effect on accidents, illness,
disability claims, theft or violence. Only 8 percent of the
companies with drug-testing programs had done any cost-benefit
analysis to see if their own programs worked.
One Silicon Valley company that did follow up was
Hewlett-Packard. The Palo Alto computer and office equipment
company tested applicants for a decade, from 1990 till last
year, says Randy Lane, a spokesman. But so few applicants
tested positive, he says, that the company dropped the policy
as not being worth the cost.
Hewlett-Packard started drug testing because, says Lane,
"Essentially, all of our competitors were doing it."
That's a big reason companies do adopt drug testing policies,
says de Bernardo, and why they should. Companies don't want
drug abuser rejects, he says, who couldn't get jobs elsewhere.
It's no surprise that the folks whose business is drug testing
claim that drug testing is good for companies, good for
workers, good for America.
"Employers have the single most effective weapon in the war on
drugs: the paycheck," says de Bernardo. "It's a ripple effect.
It's a success story as far as the community is concerned . We
want a drug-free society."
But improving society is not the major corporate agenda behind
drug testing, proponents admit. It's money. They claim that
employee drug use costs companies big money, in loss of
productivity and safety, in absenteeism, and in health and
insurance costs, even when the drug use is marijuana at home
on the weekends. The danger of marijuana use is that it's a
gateway to harder drugs, says de Bernardo. Though most pot
users don't graduate to harder drugs, he says, folks don't
usually do heroin and cocaine without first doing pot.
"Some people don't go through that gate, some do. ...For some
people, it will progress from Saturday night to midweek to
more serious drugs," he says.
What's more, he and others add, even marijuana use is illegal,
and companies have the right to know if an applicant or
employee is engaged in illegal activity.
"Any illegal drug use is illegal" says Bill Thistle, general
counsel for Psychemedics. "I think an employer has the right
to expect you not to engage in felony behavior (even) on the
weekend."
Actually, marijuana use is a misdemeanor. And in San
Francisco, District Terence Hallinan has said repeatedly over
the years that his office wouldn't prosecute anyone for
smoking pot.
Big Business as Big Brother
On the flip side, drug testing has sent groups involved in
civil rights and drug policy reform into a tizzy. To them,
drug testing smacks of Big Business posing as Big Brother
poking around in private lives.
"There's no end to that, the employer being a policeman," says
Cliff Palefsky, a San Francisco civil rights and employment
lawyer who wrote the city's ordinance banning random testing.
"It's the most intrusive search, to literally penetrate your
body fluids, search your chemistry, and determine what you
have ingested."
If someone shows up at work clearly stoned, then test that one
person, he and other drug-test opponents say. But don't
suspect everyone by making everyone get tested. That's like
having cops search everyone's home just in case there's a
criminal - which goes to the heart of the Fourth Amendment's
protection against unreasonable searches, albeit by
government.
"Privacy is an important issue. To us, it's fundamental," says
Lewis Maltby, head of the National Workrights Institute, a
research and advocacy group on workplace issues based in
Princeton, N.J., and the former director of the ACLU National
Task Force on Civil Liberties in the Workplace. "You don't
search someone's body and personal life unless you have some
grounds to think they've done something wrong" .
"Has anyone ever heard of reference checks? Wouldn't that tell
you more about their work habits than having them pee in a
bottle?"
What's more, opponents add, drug tests don't distinguish
between the occasional and the habitual user. A drug test
shows only the residue of drugs that have been taken in the
past three days to a month, not which drugs are actively in
the person's system at the time of the test. So if companies
are worried about safety and productivity, says Palefsky, they
should be giving impairment tests - simple computer video
games that gauge such things as eye- hand coordination,
reflexes and concentration - each day they show up for work,
not drug tests before they get hired.
"Drug tests for public safety is a fallacy," he says.
"Impairment tests test for safety."
Besides, drug test opponents add, other personal problems can
explain poor worker performance: fatigue, marital woes, shaky
finances, watching "I Love Lucy" reruns at 3 a.m. - and
hangovers from drinking. If employers can check if workers are
using drugs after hours, civil rights advocates say, what
other areas of personal lives can they investigate?
Rules and Procedures
Even toxicologists and others involved in drug testing voice
concern.
Janet Weiss, a medical toxicologist at the University of
California at San Francisco who does drug-testing
consultations for companies, the courts and government
agencies, says she's opposed to drug testing in the workplace
because "They don't do what they're supposed to do." Studies
haven't shown that testing improves productivity or saves
employers money, she says. And she finds drug testing
"demeaning."
"What it patently means is that the employer doesn't want `the
wrong element' contaminating his/her workplace," she says, in
an e-mail, "and you have to 'prove' you are innocent of using
drugs."
Carolina Da Valle spent several years at a San Francisco
medical clinic where job applicants would go to give urine
samples. Her job was to set up the procedures for them to
follow.
"I found it dehumanizing and humiliating to witness
individuals having to urinate in a cup - knowing a nurse was
standing an inch outside the door and listening to every drop
of urine fall into the cup..." she says in an e-mail.
"The guilty ones were easy to spot: very nervous, in a hurry,
usually with an almost ready-to-burst bladder due to excessive
water drinking in the hopes of passing a surely positive drug
screen off as a negative one."
The procedures at medical clinics and other collection
facilities usually follow the strict guidelines set up by the
federal Department of Transportation. Halle Weingarten, a
forensic toxicologist who is one of the owners of Independent
Toxicology Services in San Jose, spent 19 years as the chief
forensic toxicologist at the Santa Clara crime lab. She says
there are more rules and paperwork involved in handling a cup
of urine than just about any evidence that came through her
old police crime lab.
In drug testing, the big concern is called Chain of Custody,
she says, meaning that, "You want to make sure the sample
that's tested is the sample that came from John Doe."
As soon as the worker comes into her clinic, she checks their
photo ID. A form is filled out with five multicarbon copies,
with the worker's name, address, Social Security number, date,
time and the name of the lab technician, known officially as
the Collector. The worker is asked to remove his outer
garments like jackets and coats, and leave his bags outside
the bathroom. He then follows her in, and washes his hands in
front of her. She next prepares the bathroom: she removes the
soap so it can't be added to the urine to adulterate it; she
tapes shut the water faucets and adds a blue chemical to the
toilet bowl so water can't be added to the urine to dilute it.
She then picks up a plastic opaque cup with a rim that's 3
inches wide. The cup is sealed with a lid. She opens it in
front of the worker, hands him the cup, and warns him not to
turn on the faucet or flush the toilet until she gives him
permission. The worker then goes into the bathroom. She stands
outside the door.
As soon as he comes back out with the cup, now filled with
urine, she checks the faucets and toilet to make sure they
haven't been used. She then checks the outside of the cup.
There is a thermometer strip on it that goes from 90 to 100
degrees. The urine in the cup must be body temperature. If it
is, the thermometer strip has a brightly colored spot. She
checks for the spot, and notes it on the paperwork. Then, as
the worker bears witness, she transfers the urine into two
vials of about an ounce each. She adds a tamper- proof seal to
each vial, initials them, dates them and asks the worker to
sign each one. The vials then go in a sealed pouch, with the
paperwork attached in an outside pocket in case of spillage.
The worker is now allowed to go back in the bathroom to wash
up and flush the toilet. Signed and sealed, the package of
vials need to be delivered overnight to a drug testing lab
like PharmChem or Psychemedics. The whole process takes about
15 minutes.
Most who come in seem resigned to it, she says.
"It's a fact of life," she says. "It's the way things are."
A Matter of Principle
Still, though resigned, workers aren't exactly turning
cartwheels about drug tests. Drug users are understandably
reluctant to take a drug test and risk losing out on a job,
especially in these days of massive layoffs and hiring
freezes. But even those who claim not to do drugs say they're
opposed to the test on principle.
Lowell Moorcroft, an Oakland man who is in his 50s, says he
was stunned recently when asked to sign a document agreeing to
be tested for drugs when he applied for a data analyst job at
a major HMO. It was the first time he's been asked in 30 years
of work. He refused to sign, he says, because he was offended.
"It has nothing to do with the job, which is intellectual,
professional and sedentary," he says in an e-mail. "It is
invasive, demeaning, inegalitarian (i. e., are executives
tested?)."
James Weissman, 44, a computer programmer who lives in
Mountain View, has been asked to take a drug test only once in
some 20-plus years and some 15 jobs. The request was in 1991,
for a small data analysis company. He was out of work at the
time and wanted the job, but he squawked when the drug test
requirement was sprung on him at the end of the job interview.
It was, he recalls, "Oh, one more thing," resume is great,
you're great, we just need you to pee in a cup.
"I said `You've got to be kidding. I'm not operating heavy
equipment here. I'm operating a computer,' " Weissman told the
job interviewer.
To Weissman, asking him to pee in a cup was like the company
telling him it didn't trust him - even though he says he gave
his word that he didn't do drugs.
Weissman demanded to speak to the human resources director,
hoping he could reason with him. What he found most maddening
about the conversation, he says, was the director's inability
to explain why the drug test was required other than the fact
that it was company policy. To Weissman, it was like a parent
telling a kid he had to do something "Because."
"This was very anti-worker," he says. "It was `We're going to
impose an arbitrary rule on you. And we're not going to take
your word for it.' If one person could justify it to me, no
problem. But `Well, it's our policy. `Well, look, it's written
down here' is not enough of an explanation. Why not bowel
cavity inspections? You have to draw the line. You do not
intrude, period."
Still, Weissman needed the job. He took the test, and the job.
"When push came to shove, I conceded," he says.
Drug Free in a Hurry
But for those who do drugs, it's more than principle that's at
stake. With a drug test looming, it's a crash course to get
clean.
Jason Everley, 30, a San Francisco computer consultant, says
in an e-mail he can't count how many drug tests he's passed,
given 72 hours' notice. His secret: "Drink lots of water and
eat like a bird for three days. You'll end up pissing every
relevant, detectable chemical out of your system."
But for others, a drug test means panic. With a urine test,
metabolites for anything but pot will usually flush out of the
system within a few days of abstinence, drug labs say. But
with hair testing - the latest fad, with Psychemedics claiming
2,000 clients - drug use is harder to hide. Hair testing is
controversial, with opponents claiming the dark, coarse hair
of African Americans and many ethnic groups gives
disproportionately high readings.
Many who face a drug test turn to companies who pledge
get-clean-quick products. Urineluck.com not only sells Bake N
Shake (at the test, pee in a plastic bag, shake it up, pour it
in the cup, leaving the telltale drug toxins behind) and Urine
Luck (a urine adulterant which zaps the drugs in the cup), but
offers a chat room for folks to gripe and ask anxious
questions. Other Web sites post what they say are testimonials
from working stiffs who owe their jobs to the company's
products.
High Times has a hot line, started in 1989, that claims it's
given 150,000 callers, at $1.95 a minute, recorded advice on
how to pass drug tests. Even Yippie activist Abbie Hoffman got
into the act, in his book titled "Steal This Urine Test," with
instructions on how to smuggle a plastic bag into the testing
bathroom to substitute "clean" urine.
Hoffman's trick sounds a lot like The Whizzinator by Puck
Technology, whose Web site claims it was founded by ex-'60s
types. Perhaps the most famous of the guerrilla tactics, it's
a $150 undergarment with a "bladder," heat pack and dehydrated
synthetic urine. To get the fake piss in the cup, there's a
handy-dandy, 3.5 inch prosthetic penis that's worn, the Web
site says, "in front of your standard-issue" one and that
comes in your choice of white, Latino, black, tan or brown.
For women, the penis can be worn on the side to avoid the
telltale bulge.
Despite the humor of such products, many Web sites profess
sincerity. The folks at passyourdrugtest.com describe
themselves as "freedom fighters" who believe in "people's
rights to privacy" and that alternative lifestyles have
"little or nothing to do with contributions you can make to
work and society." To test their products - which include the
$169.99 Bi-Cleanse Complete hair- cleansing shampoo that
claims to get rid of toxins in hair shafts - the company says
it flies staff members to Amsterdam every five months to visit
the smoke shops, known as coffee shops, and get hard-core
users to volunteer to test the products. The products
absolutely work, they assure customers.
The drug labs love to mock the products - even as they keep
tabs on them.
"We purchase these products to see what they are," says
Thistle of Psychemedics. "It's just nothing. Plain shampoo.
Repackaged shampoo. Prell. Water. Most of them are just
rip-offs.
"Who's going to complain? `Yeah, I was trying to beat the test
and they ripped me off.' ... We just get a chuckle out of it."
Companies Are Bashful
Curiously, companies in the corporate mainstream act as if
they're being asked to pee in public when queried about their
testing policy. Hired mouthpieces get all bashful, citing the
indelicacy of discussing their human resources policies with
total strangers. It's just too private.
Apple, the computer company whose advertising campaign dares
folks to Think Different, declined to discuss the thinking
behind their drug testing policy - or even whether they had
one.
"In general, we just don't, you know, talk publicly about our
human resources policy. Publicly we talk about our products,"
Tamara Weil-Hearon, a spokeswoman for the Cupertino company,
says on a voice mail message. "Unfortunately, we're not going
to participate in the story."
Chiron, the biotech giant that's quick to trumpet any success
in its research labs, was also demure about whether it turned
the urine or hair of prospective hires into lab experiments.
"We don't comment on our human resources policies," says John
Gallagher, the media relations manager at the Emeryville
facility. "That's our answer."
Martin Forrest, his boss at Chiron, didn't return a call
seeking additional comment. Neither did Debra Lambert,
national spokeswoman for Safeway food stores, which is
headquartered in Pleasanton. A woman answering her phone - who
identified herself as "just the messenger" - relayed that yes,
Safeway did do drug tests but that no, beyond that, any
explanation was nobody's business but Safeway's.
Meanwhile, EBay, Oracle, Genentech, Advanced Micro Devices,
Yahoo and Applied Materials, to name the biggies, blew off the
calls. Only Cisco (doesn't test), Sun Microsystems (doesn't
test), Intel (does test), The San Francisco Chronicle (does
test), Wells Fargo (doesn't test in Bay Area, does in other
cities), Bank of America (does test, but only sometimes) and
Hewlett- Packard (did test but stopped last year) responded.
Cisco just says it doesn't but didn't go into it in a voice
mail message from Steve Langdon, one of a flotilla of flaks at
the San Jose networking company. Sun Microsystems doesn't
test, says spokeswoman Diane Carlini, because it wouldn't jibe
with the culture and self-image of the Silicon Valley computer
company.
No such self-image worries at Intel. Tracy Koon, director of
corporate affairs for the Santa Clara chipmaker, says in an
e-mail:
"Yes we do pre-employment drug testing. The goal of the
program is to bar the habitual abuser of illegal drugs from
the workplace. This is part of our ongoing commitment to
maintaining a drug-free workplace. We began our program in
1992, in strict adherence to the fairness standards set forth
by the Department of Transportation."
Maintaining a drug-free workplace is the thinking behind its
testing of applicants, says Adrianne Cabanatuan, the
recruitment manager for The San Francisco Chronicle, which has
been testing most prospective hires for at least a decade, and
began testing wannabe reporters and editors in June 1996. "We
try to preserve a drug-free workplace," she says, "so that's
one step toward it."
Meanwhile, Wells Fargo bank feels it's able to maintain its
goal of a drug- free workplace without pre-employment testing
in the Bay Area and most of the rest of its realm. "For the
most part, we don't have any problems," says spokeswoman Donna
Uchida. "If we do, we deal with it on an individual basis."
The company does test, however, in Milwaukee and in Oregon,
she says, where it's the norm among major employers.
Its competitor, Bank of America, also tests selectively. The
company "reserves the right to drug test but I'd hate to say
we do it across the board," says spokeswoman Juliet Don. The
decision on whether to drug test the prospective hire is
subjective, based on, she says,"the role and responsibility of
the associate."
Note: The drug-testing industry is a multibillion dollar
profit center. And a giant weapon in the War on Drugs. So
don't be surprised if you have to pony up prior to your next
job interview.
Read
Our Reply Here!!
Marianne Costantinou is a
Magazine staff writer.
Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Author: Marianne Costantinou
Published: Sunday, August 12, 2001
Copyright: 2001 San Francisco Chronicle - Page 12
Contact: letters@sfchronicle.com
Website: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/ |
