ACCUSED WORKERS CHALLENGE DRUG-TEST RESULTS IN COURT

In February of last year, flight attendant Julia Jones had just landed in
Denver when she was met at the gate by three grim-faced supervisors.

They'd come to tell her she was being fired, she says. The reason? Jones
had earlier taken a random drug test, and she says she was told results
showed she'd tried to cheat by substituting her sample with something else.

Jones, 42, of Littleton, Colo., says she was dumbstruck. She says she
doesn't use drugs and never cheated.

In a lawsuit that illustrates just how fierce the debate about drug testing
has become, Jones is suing to get her job back and reputation restored.

"I've had no job for 16 months, I've spent $22,000 on an attorney, our
house is in foreclosure, and hopefully, we'll be able to pay for our
daughter's college," she says. "It's appalling. You're going to see more
people come forward and stand up to this."

Her former employer, Denver-based Frontier Airlines, declined to comment
because of the pending litigation. But as drug testing spreads and labs
develop new methods of detecting drugs, more people are challenging the
science and fairness behind the practice.

Employers maintain that testing is accurate and increasingly necessary to
lower injury rates and absenteeism costs. But critics say the rise in
testing has cost too many wrongly-accused employees long-held careers. They
say newer testing methods are being adopted despite questions about their
accuracy. And they say millions are at risk. More than 65% of major
employers test for drugs today, according to the American Management
Association. That compares with about 20% in 1987.

"There are some real problems," says Robert Morus, a Delta pilot and an
executive vice president of the Air Line Pilots Association. "Labs are
doing tests in the cheapest way possible and being cavalier in their
findings. People are being accused of a crime and losing their jobs. Their
lives are turned upside down."

Debate about drug testing has raged for decades. But now a new
aggressiveness is taking hold.

Employees who say they've been wrongly accused are filing lawsuits, and in
some cases, juries are awarding hundreds of thousands of dollars. Unions
are trying to block government regulations that would require more firms to
test for workers who try to cheat on drug tests.

Why Employers Test For Drug Use

At the same time, many employers are not backing down. They say tests are
accurate, procedures protect workers from false positives, and testing is
needed because drug use on the job is rampant.

At Home Depot, signs in many of its stores alert prospective job candidates
that they can expect to be tested for drugs if they apply.

"You almost have to do it for self defense. If you don't, you get everybody
else's risks," says Layne Thome, director of associate services at Home
Depot in Atlanta, adding that employers who don't test can be seen as a
haven for drug users. "On the job, people feel safer. Once we began testing
after accidents, we saw an immediate decrease in workers' compensation claims."

And drug use is a real threat. A 1997 study by the government's Substance
Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration, found the rate of illicit
drug use among full-time workers to be 7.7%.

Companies with mandatory testing have found real upsides. According to the
American Management Association, some of the benefits reported include
lower accident rates, fewer disability claims and decreases in violence and
absenteeism.

"It's so necessary. You can't be too safe in this industry when you have
metal in the sky," says Elise Eberwein, a spokeswoman at Frontier Airlines.
"When people buy your products and services, they're putting their life in
your hands, and this is one aspect of what you do to make sure your
industry is safer."

Labs' Reliability Challenged

Many critics of testing don't disagree that drug use is a threat. But they
say employees shouldn't be forced to submit to tests that may cause them to
lose their jobs when they've done nothing wrong.

Consider Yasuko Ishikawa, whose case has recently become a cause celebre
among drug-testing opponents. The Delta Air Lines flight attendant says she
was returning from Japan in 1999 when she was told to submit to a random
urine test. After being told tests showed her urine had been tampered with,
she was suspended and eventually fired.

"I was ashamed; I was just panicking. I was accused of lying," says
Ishikawa, of Beaverton, Ore. "I don't even drink or smoke. I felt like a
criminal, like, 'What do I do with the rest of my life?' Who was going to
hire me? I decided I should make noise so I can protect other people."

She says her offers to take other blood tests or have her sample retested
were declined. She sued, and the Lenexa, Kan.-based LabOne that did her
test was found negligent. This month, a jury awarded Ishikawa $400,000;
she's been reinstated.

In a written statement, LabOne officials said they "passed all government
inspections with highly acceptable ratings during the time period in
question." An appeal is under consideration.

"We regret that this incident occurred," says Delta spokesman Russ
Williams, adding that the "court found that Delta acted properly."

But Ishikawa wasn't alone. At least five people who had failed tests to
verify their urine hadn't been tampered with were offered their jobs back
by Delta due to doubts about the reliability of lab results.

New Tests Under Scrutiny

Critics of testing have seized upon such cases as they step up their
opposition to newer forms and methods of testing.

One of their targets: validity tests, which are tests done to be sure a
urine sample hasn't been adulterated or diluted to hide drug use. Critics
say the validity tests are too often inaccurate.

But opponents also are setting their sights on other methods of testing.
Products that allow drug use to be detected in sweat by wearing a
Band-Aid-like device have been criticized as impractical and prone to false
positives from external contamination. On-site tests that give employers
instant results are catching on, but critics say those may give too many
false positives.

And testing hair for drugs has been criticized on several fronts. In 1997,
the National Institute on Drug Abuse warned "there may be significant
ethnic bias in hair testing for cocaine." Critics say that's because the
test causes more positive readings for people with darker hair, such as
Asians and African-Americans.

Providers of the test, however, reject those claims.

"We do an extensive washing of hair (to prevent) external contamination,"
says Ray Kubacki, president and CEO of Cambridge, Mass.-based Psychemedics,
which provides hair-testing analysis. "And the darker-hair issue is all
baloney. There is no basis for that whatsoever. This is an important tool
for employers."

But critics say labs are not foolproof.

The Department of Health and Human Services inspected 61 federally
certified labs where validity testing is done. About 300 results at 30 labs
were canceled after they were found to be questionable.

Supporters say that's a small number, since about 13 million specimens were
reviewed. But that risk is still unacceptable, according to some union
leaders who say the number of questionable tests may be far higher.

"We believe it's in the thousands," says Ray Lineweber, with the United
Transportation Union. "Employees have been at the mercy of these labs. It's
a lot worse than anybody wants to admit."

New Testing Guidelines

The stakes are getting higher. The government this year is expected to
establish mandatory guidelines that will require more employees to undergo
tests to be sure they haven't tampered with their urine samples.

The guidelines will cover more than 8.3 million employees in the more than
650,000 businesses involved in interstate transportation.

Supporters say the guidelines are needed to counter new products on the
market that can foil tests. They say precautions will be taken to guarantee
results are accurate and that no one is wrongly accused.

But until there's more review of the science and a stronger way for workers
to appeal results, critics say there are no guarantees. And they say they
have no plans to back down from challenging the drug-testing industry.

Renee Sharpe illustrates how far employees are willing to go in their quest
to take on testing. She says she was wrongly fired as a courier with
Federal Express after failing a test. To sue the hospital where she left
her urine sample for testing, she says she sold her all-terrain vehicle and
used the money to hire a lawyer.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case.

"We have a very well-respected occupational medicine program and feel very
confident that necessary and responsible procedures were followed," says
Susan Schantz, at St. Luke's Hospital in Bethlehem, Pa.

Sharpe tells a different story.

"It's devastating," says Sharpe, who says she never used drugs.

"They didn't believe me, but I knew I had done nothing wrong. It took me 3
years to find (a similar job), because every time I applied somewhere, I
was asked why I left. I never thought this could happen to me."