BILL CRACKS DOWN ON DRUG USE IN MINES CHARLESTON - Drug abuse inside West Virginia's coal mines is an issue one southern lawmaker says must be addressed in the final weeks of this session. A new bill offered before the House of Delegates deadline by Delegate Eustace Frederick, D-Mercer, would insist on drug and alcohol testing of workers applying for jobs as miners. Once hired, miners would have to submit to periodic retesting to see if any abuse is occurring. As coal operators scramble to find enough workers to fill mining jobs in a workforce that is rapidly aging, Frederick said drug problems are evident among fresh applicants. "Now, as they're getting applicants for coal mining, they're having great difficulty coming up with folks that aren't using drugs," Frederick said before Friday's floor session. "In coal mining, you can't be drugged and work. You're going to have to be alert all the time." Frederick is no stranger to the industry, having devoted his working career as an engineer. His bill calls for testing, "at a minimum," for concentrations of alcohol and such controlled substances as marijuana, cocaine, phencyclidine, amphetamines and opiate metabolites. Frederick wants the Board of Coal Mine Health and Safety to produce rules that set impermissible concentrations for drugs and alcohol. Coal operators would pay for the testing, his proposal stipulates. No one could look at a miner's drug and alcohol test results through a Freedom of Information Act filing. Mine safety has become an intense study matter for the Legislature this year in the wake of tragedies and accidents that killed 16 miners in a 32-day stretch, beginning Jan. 2 with an explosion that trapped 13 workers in an underground mine in Upshur County. "I think it's a vital safety item for coal mine folks to be in the best shape they can be in," Frederick said. "We should require this testing. Before someone is allowed to work, they should be tested. And as you go along on the job, you need to be tested again."
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