Yes, your employees are all stoned.
Of course not. That isn’t true. But for the first time since First Lady Nancy Reagan advised us to “Just Say No” to drugs, US employees testing positive for drugs looks to be increasing, according to Quest Diagnostics.
Reported by the Wall Street Journal, drugs were found in 3.9 percent of 9.1 million urine tests given to employees in 2014. This is up from 3.7 percent in 2013–the first year since 1988 that the overall percentage of positives didn’t go down. (By the way, positives were 13.6 percent in 1988. Holy cow. That’s insane. Did only Wall Street employees get tested back then?)
No, 3.9 percent does not exactly elicit a panicked response, but there is something to say about this. While not exactly yet a trend, drug use in the workplace is worth keeping an eye on. I mean, we were just getting a handle on workers’ compensation and now you’re going to tell us our employees are high? Yikes.
It is said–and it would seem to be Common Sense 101–that a stupefied employee base equals additional health and safety hazards as well as a possible drop in productivity. Each could cut a good hole in an employer’s profitability. What about other liabilities? Do you have enough general liability insurance to pay legal bills and a settlement when a high employee does a shoddy job on a project and causes a client harm?…or when he gets into an accident with the company van?
Guess what else? Let’s say you tested that employee after the accident and it came up positive for cocaine. You’re off the hook, right? Nope. According to some reports on recent litigation I’ve been reading, this isn’t necessarily true, according to some state laws. Post-accident testing may not prove, in the eyes of the law, that an employee was high during the accident.
Most positives, according to the WSJ, are from marijuana. Baked employees make up nearly 50 percent of the positive drug tests. Twenty-three states and our nation’s capital legalize the use of marijuana in some way and what’s interesting is the lawyers in the story said some employers–like ones in Colorado–are stepping up testing efforts to nab potheads before employing them…because it is a lot better than trying to fire them and face litigation.
It’s difficult to link economic cycles to drug use but the increase in urine-test positives follows a trend of increased drug use in the overall population. Prescription drug use can account for some of the positives but Quest said it discards them from results when employees verify a script is from a doctor. Still, positive tests for amphetamines, like prescription drugs such as Adderall, has increased big time. Employers have reportedly started testing for prescription drugs but there is no way for an employer to know if an employee is following the dosage instructions for any prescribed drug.
Drug use in the workplace is a topic we had planned to visit soon for the Executive Risk Network. Feel free to contact me if you’d like to talk about this.
Chad Hemenway is Managing Editor of Advisen News. He has more than 15 years of journalist experience at a variety of online, daily, and weekly publications. He has covered P&C insurance news since 2007, and he has experience writing about all P&C lines as well as regulation and litigation. Chad won a Jesse H. Neal Award for Best Single Article in 2014 for his coverage of the insurance implications of traumatic brain injuries and Best News Coverage in 2013 for coverage of Superstorm Sandy. Contact Chad at 212.897.4824 or [email protected].
