A SMALL ADDITION TO DRUG-TEST POLICY

Bibb County has not only a right but an obligation to take necessary
measures to keep its work force drug-free. The question is how far it
should go to achieve that aim before infringing on an employee's most
fundamental rights.

County employees so far have voiced no complaints over signing an
agreement outlining a tough new drug policy. Of course, the agreement
is its own protection against complaints, given that a section of it
says that refusal to sign amounts to a violation. Anyone failing to
sign can get fired.

Now that's tough. So's the meat of the policy, which imposes random
drug tests on roughly two-thirds of county employees and mandates a
pink slip for any who fail.

That new policy began to take form after 10 out of 82 of the county's
public works employees failed a random test in June. Only three got
fired. The new policy will allow for no survivors.

To that proposed zero-tolerance policy we issued our unsolicited
editorial blessing - though with some reluctance. It was a
regret-the-necessity sort of endorsement. Surely taxpayers have the
right to expect that the deputy, the trash-truck driver - any employee
with a commercial license to drive and considered "safety sensitive" -
go to work without a trace of illegal impurities in the system. And if
Big Brother has to take liberties to make it so, so be it.

So groups of 20 such employees will be computer-picked once a month to
contribute urine samples. No excuses. It will be ten times tougher to
get out of jury duty. An employee testing positive does get a second,
more expensive, "compensation test" to eliminate false-positive results.

It all sounds fair enough, if you aren't bothered about the babble of
one ACLU lawyer who was quoted in our Sunday story as saying: "It is
unfair to force workers who are not even suspected of using drugs to
'prove' their innocence through a degrading and uncertain procedure
that violates personal privacy."

Well, a U.S. District Court says random drug tests for those who
operate government vehicles and/or carry firearms are OK, but they
don't apply to elected officials. In other words, the sheriff gets
immunity, his deputies don't. County judges, of course, do, as do the
officials drafting the policy. Viewed a certain way, the whole thing
seems a little elitist.

To dismiss that perception, we call on Bibb County commissioners,
who're drafting the new policy, to waive their right of immunity and
place their names in the computer pool for random drug testing. Of
course, nobody could fire them if they tested positive, but at least
the very act of giving a sample would set a fine example for the
ordinary employee.

We're holding our breath.