DRUG FREE WORK PLACE

Dearest Cintra: Almost all employers now have policies claiming to be a
"drug-free workplace." And many employers require newly hired employees to
pass a drug test as a condition of employment. I understand that
pre-employment drug screening may be reasonable for some occupations, but
why expect any low-paid, corporate haybaler to pass a drug test? Reference
checks? OK. Credit checks? Well, maybe. But drug tests? Some companies even
conduct random drug tests on their current employees!

I wonder how often the top executives and board members are included in
these invasive challenges to individual freedom. I think drug testing turns
justice on its head for two reasons: 1) It assumes you're guilty until
proven innocent, and 2) It requires you to "testify" against yourself, in a
most personal way.

For the record, I don't do any drugs. But I am concerned about erosions of
our freedom. Yet there doesn't seem to be much more than a peep of protest
against Big Brother in the workplace. Holy Antonin Scalia, what is
happening in the land of the free and the home of the brave? - Questioning
Authority.

Dearest Questioning: This is just another example of our nation's Draconian
drug policies, and just another facet of the big problem, which is the fact
that we, as a society, tend to enthusiastically punish deviant behavior
wherever possible, but we do next to nothing to prevent it.

Since corporate policy has become the handmaiden of a laughably inept and
hypocritical drug war that never really kept so much as an amusing cough
syrup out of our country, and since there are next to no effective
rehabilitation programs for anyone but the rich, I advocate anyone's
decisions to retain several quarts of baby urine to use whenever possible
on such tests, and to lie outright on any intrusive questionnaires.

Friends of mine who have crossed the line in such cases have discovered
that if their drug habit doesn't impede their abilities to be a useful
corporate drone, in most cases nothing happens. Other friends have been
sent to rehab on the company dollar, which one can regard as either a
flaming intrusion on one's way of life or a rare example of proactive
health care.

What is really getting out of line is the prison industrial complex, which
is essentially the largest and fastest-growing sweatshop in the world, and
the fact that an enormous number of young men are locked-up for nonviolent
(drug) crimes. The old Drugs Slavery equation is no longer a metaphor;
Uncle Sam will look for any reason to lock your ass up and put your vital
energies to work booking airline flights for 33 cents a day. On the upside,
you can get hopped up on all the goofballs you like in prison, and none
will bat an eye. There is a certain freedom to losing all of one's freedom.