Dealing With Federal Laws: Figuring Out How To Drug Test Your Employees

December 23rd, 2010   Add Comment

[This is the third in a series of articles by Kim Wilbur, operations manager for a local company.  To view all of Kim's blogs please visit the Blog Series:  Employee Drug Testing homepage.]

Federal Laws

Now that I want to start drug testing our employees what do I do?  Maybe the question is, “what do I HAVE to do?”  I thought I had better first find out what the laws and requirements are, so I started doing some research.  The federal laws that your business must adhere to will vary depending on the amount of employees you have on staff and the type of business you have.  See below for a brief summary of applicable laws and how they relate to creating a drug-free workplace policy.

Fifteen or More Employees

American with Disabilities Act of 1990

A federal law that protects people with disabilities from discrimination.   The importance of the ADA is to ensure that employers evaluate an individuals’ ability to do the required job tasks and that they make employment decisions based on an individual’s qualifications and performance not the person’s history of drug or alcohol abuse.  For more information see the Department of Labor’s ADA page.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964

This landmark bill prohibits private employers from discriminating against individuals on the basis of race, sex, religion, or nationality.  Employers are required to ensure that their drug free workplace policy and programs treat all workers equally and avoid singling out any particular racial, ethnic, or gender group for drug or alcohol testing or disciplinary action. _____________________________________________________________________________________

Fifty or More Employees

Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993

This act enables employees to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave within a 12 month period, due to a serious health problem or a substance abuse problem as long as they have worked for an employer for at least 1 year.   For more information see the Department of Labor’s FMLA page. _____________________________________________________________________________________

Unionized Industries

National Labor Relations Act

This act requires that a drug testing policy that affects union workers, must be negotiated and agreed upon with the union itself.  Even if the employer is mandated to have a policy because of the type of industry it is in, such as a transportation company, the employer must still work closely with the union to determine the specifics of the policy.  For more information see the National Labor Relations Board site here.

Federal Government Contractors and Grantees Drug Free Workplace Act of 1988

This requires Federal contractors and all Federal grantees to agree that they will provide drug-free workplaces as a condition of receiving a contract or grant from a Federal agency.   For more information see this page from the Department of Labor.

Transportation Industry The Omnibus Transportation Employee Testing Act of 1991

States that any employee performing safety-sensitive transportation functions, including ones in the “aviation, trucking, railroads, mass transit, and pipelines industries” are required to be drug and alcohol tested.  Employee drug testing must be done pre- employment, in the event of reasonable suspicion, post-accident, return to duty and follow up, and at predetermined random rates.  For more information see the Department of Transportation’s page.

Department of Defense

All contractors working for the Department of Defense who have access to classified information must create, maintain and enforce a drug free work place policy.  The policies must be consistent with state laws and be agreed to by any relevant labor union.  For more information see this official PDF from the military.

Other Federal Safety Sensitive Organizations

Other organizations that have similar drug testing policies to the US Department of Defense are the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.  More information about their policies can be found on each agency’s Web site or in the Code of Federal Regulations.

Again these are basic overviews of the Federal laws that may apply to your business.  To ensure that you are following the appropriate laws and regulations for your business so that you can avoid fines or being sued, you should consult a lawyer.

We hope this helped and that you found it interesting!  Stay tuned for our next installment!

Tags: , ,

More Teens Smoke Pot Than Cigarettes: So Says New Monitoring The Future Study Out Today

December 14th, 2010   Add Comment

In a remarkable study published today by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, it was found that among 12th graders more report past-month marijuana use than they do cigarette use.  This is the first time this has happened since 1981.

The new statistics are found in this year’s Monitoring the Future survey.  The study comes out every year.  The exact finding was that 21.4% of 12th graders used marijuana in the past 30 days, compared to 19.2% who smoked cigarettes.

Other interesting findings include that general past year drug use among 8th graders rose over the past year by 1.5% to 16%.  Use of ecstasy increased, most drastically among 8th graders, where use almost doubled.  Prescription drug abuse stayed generally the same (although use of Vicodin decreased among 12th graders).  One bright spot is that teen binge drinking appears to be decreasing.  Among high school seniors, 23.2% met the requirements of a binge in the past two weeks (5 or more drinks in a row).  This is two percentage points less than in 2009 and far below the high for binge drinking in 1998, which was 31.5%.

What does this really tell us?  Is decreased alcohol use among teens “worth” increases in marijuana use?  Can we even say that it works like that (probably not!)?  Some experts are contributing the increase in marijuana usage among teens to mixed messages being sent about whether marijuana is generally medicinal or not.  It may also have to do with the fact that marijuana use is decriminalized in parts of the United States.  Perhaps this will make families and employers more inclined to screen with a marijuana drug test kit.  In any case, as usual these statistics will attract attention and cause those on both sides of the pro/anti drug debate to reflect on our culture today – what is the best way to handle teens’ curiosity about drugs and how can we best keep kids safe?

For more please see the LA Times or HealthDay.

Tags: , , ,

Book Review: “Intoxicating Minds” by Ciaran Regan

December 8th, 2010   Add Comment

For anyone interested in drugs, no matter the aspect (substance rehabilitation, public policy, cultural studies, etc.), it seems wise to learn at least a little bit about pharmacology. Pharmacology is the study of how drugs work in the body and the brain. It’s a rapidly developing field that could be the key to solving all sorts of problems – Alzheimer’s Disease, schizophrenia, depression, and so on. It tells us how drugs work in terms of their effects in our brains and on our behavior.

For a wide-ranging and colorful introduction to pharmacology, you can rely on Professor Ciaran Regan’s book “Intoxicating Minds: How Drugs Work.” I learned quite a bit about drugs both legal and illegal. Alcohol, for example, unlike many other drugs, does not have a specific receptor in the brain that it acts upon. It basically affects the entire nerve cell system. Benzodiazepines, on the other hand, have very specific effects. They bind on what is known as the GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid) receptor and enhance the binding ability of the GABA neurotransmitter. Though both alcohol and benzodiazepines are colloquially known as “downers,” it’s obvious that they work in extremely different ways.

Intoxicating Minds, a book on pharmacology.

"Intoxicating Minds: How Drugs Work" by Ciaran Regan.

Although I understand pharmacology better than I did before reading this book, it’s still a challenging and complicated field of study. If you really want to understand pharmacology, you’re going to have to study and read far more academic texts than this one. (Keep in mind that I came to the book with zip knowledge of pharmacology, though.) For some people, Russian novels make them wish they had a list of the characters’ first, middle, and last names; in my case, this book made me wish for an illustrated list of key definitions that I could refer back to as the book moved from drug class to drug class.

While you won’t get a degree in pharmacology from reading the book, you will learn a lot about the development of drugs and their use, both ancient and modern. A great deal of time is spent on mood disorders and schizophrenia, which yields some insights and draws attention to the upsetting fact that still, we just don’t get it – a full understanding of schizophrenia and depression still elude our grasp. My favorite sections covered how psychoactive drugs may’ve been involved in mankind’s first cave paintings, how the placebo effect may (or may not) work, and how plants themselves naturally contain benzodiazepines and other psychoactive substances and how those substances may regulate a plant’s own functions and in turn have influenced natural selection when it comes to human development.

The last bit is the most fascinating to me, and most reflect the author’s goals for this book. How in evolutionary history have drugs influenced our social organization and affected the development of our genetic code? Professor Regan is clear from the very beginning that he has no answers, just questions, and a lot of information (my favorite tidbit – did you know you can get benzodiazepines from cows’ milk, as a result of the way their body processes certain grasses? Presumably not enough to blame a failed urine drug test on milk, though – it’s no poppy seed bagel). Any of the chapters in the book could easily be expanded into a full book and be worth reading. For the curiosity it inspires alone, “Intoxicating Minds” is well worth your time.

Check out the book’s homepage at the Columbia University Press site.

Learn more about the author by visiting Professor Ciaran Regan’s page at the University College Dublin.

-  Book review by Robyn Schelenz.