DRUG TESTING OF HAIR, SALIVA BY FEDS LOOMS

Private employers may be next

NEW YORK - The federal government is planning to overhaul its employee
drug-testing program to include scrutiny of workers' hair, saliva and
sweat, a shift that could spur more private businesses to revise
screening for millions of their own workers.

The planned changes, long awaited by the testing industry, reflect
government efforts to be more precise in its drug screening and to
outmaneuver a small but growing subset of workers who try to cheat on
urine-based tests.

Some businesses already have adopted alternative testing, despite
criticism by privacy advocates. Others have held back, partly awaiting
government standards.

Alternative tests hold appeal because their accuracy cannot be foiled
with products sold to mask drug residue in urine, say company and
government officials, noting that the tests are extremely accurate.

Alternative testing methods would give employers more certainty about
the timing and scope of drug use than is now possible solely with
urine sampling, said Robert Stephenson, an official with the federal
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

That could be particularly valuable in situations like investigations
of on-the-job accidents, to determine not just whether an employee
uses drugs but if usage occurred recently enough to be a cause.

Alternative testing will "really ramp up our ability to increase the
deterrent value of our program, which is basically the whole bottom
line," said Stephenson, director of the agency's Division of Workplace
Programs.

Stephenson said it would likely be a year until the new policies take
effect for the nation's 1.6 million federal workers. The substance
abuse agency, known as SAMHSA, sets guidelines and administers the
testing.

All federal workers are eligible to be tested. SAMHSA, a division of
the Department of Health and Human Services, tests fewer than 200,000
workers a year. The decision about who is tested often depends on the
sensitivity of the job.

Yet because its standards are followed by regulatory agencies that
conduct testing in industries they oversee, SAMHSA is responsible for
about 6.5 million of the 40 million workplace drug tests done each
year by U.S. employers.

The agency's testing standards also are widely followed by thousands
of other employers, public and private.

The proposed changes are due out "literally any day," Stephenson said.
He would not discuss details of the proposals before their release.

Changes would not likely go into effect until early next year, after
the agency solicits public comment, finishes guidelines and prepares
for the transition. Once that happens, many other employers could
follow suit, government and industry officials say.

"There's no doubt about it that SAMHSA's guidelines become the
standard for the industry whether you're a regulated employer or not,
and so what SAMHSA does will have wide-ranging impact," said Kenneth
Kunsman, a marketing executive with OraSure Technologies Inc., which
makes a saliva testing kit.

More employers are already using alternative testing. But many have
held back because of the lack of standards, said Laura Shelton,
executive director of the Drug and Alcohol Testing Industry
Association, which represents test manufacturers and labs.

Privacy advocates express doubts, pointing to cases of police officers
and others who allege false positives because their hair absorbed
drugs around them, as well as research suggesting dark hair soaks up
more drug byproducts than light hair.

The screening industry has worked in recent years to promote
alternative tests.

Casino operators and local police departments were among the first to
use hair testing for pre-employment screening because it allows
detection of drug use over much longer periods than urine.

It is also now used by employers including Kraft Foods Inc. and brewer
Anheuser-Busch Cos.

"Urine tests were fallible in a variety of ways," said Alan Feldman, a
spokesman for MGM Mirage, which adopted pre-employment hair testing
for all its 42,000 workers in 1993. "We want our people to be sharp."

Psychemedics Corp., the largest hair-testing company, has about 2,600
corporate clients and last year did about 400,000 tests, vice
president Bill Thistle said.

Saliva testing has been marketed for workplace drug screening for only
a few years. Companies including paper manufacturer Georgia-Pacific
Corp. have adopted it.

Kunsman said the labs affiliated with his firm this year expect to
process 60,000 to 70,000 workplace drug tests a month.

Government officials and testing industry executives say the new tests
are less a replacement for urine screening than an additional tool for
employers.

"In different cases, one specimen may be better than the other," said
Dr. Donna Bush, drug testing team leader at SAMHSA's Center for
Substance Abuse Prevention.