Drug War

TRASHING THE CONSTITUTION

With unemployment at or near record lows, all that stands between Iowa and
economic glory is the ability to attract enough workers to the state to
fill the jobs being generated. Given our climate and traditionally low
wages, this can be a tough sell. The Legislature and governor want to make
this even tougher by expanding drug testing, which will be used to harass
the very workers they want to attract. Prosperity or drug testing: choose.

John Hiett,1172 Hotz, Iowa City.

The Iowa Senate recently passed a drug-testing bill that gives employers
the right to randomly test their employees for drugs and alcohol for no
particular reason.

This is very disturbing, as it strips away personal freedoms. We all want
to eliminate drugs and alcohol in society and the workplace, but not at the
expense of our rights.

Iowa's current law gives employers the right to test employees when they
have probable cause.

The bill that passed the Senate gives employers more rights than what law
enforcement officials have and subjects thousands of law-abiding,
hard-working Iowans to unnecessary invasion of personal privacy. Drug and
alcohol abuse is a problem in society, not just in the workplace.

Apparently businesses feel these problems are not their responsibility.
When a piece of machinery breaks down, a business does not hesitate to
spend whatever it takes to repair it.

Why, when workers have a drug problem, do they want to throw them away?
Iowans who have substance-abuse problems need help in overcoming their
problem, which this law would not require the employer to provide.

I applaud the Senate Democrats, and the lone Republican, for voting against
this bill that violates our freedom and does nothing to solve the problem
of drug and alcohol abuse in our state.

Randy Boulton, United Steelworkers of America, 301 N.E. Trilein Dr., Ankeny.

"The right of people to be secure in their persons ... against unreasonable
searches ... shall not be violated ... but upon probable cause." These
words come from the Fourth Amendment to our Constitution. Still fresh in
the minds of the authors were the invasions of privacy and unwarranted
searches by British soldiers of the masses in an effort to find the guilty
few.

And now, in 1998, the search of the masses could again become law. Our
state Senate, under the premise of providing innocent workers the right to
a safe, drug-free workplace, has passed a bill taking from these same
innocent employees their right to privacy and against being unreasonably
searched by their employers.

There is no epidemic of workplace alcohol and drug use. According to a
major drug-testing company that supplies workplace drug-testing data to our
government, of the more than 2 million workplace drug tests performed in
the first half of 1997, less than 6 percent resulted positive. And of
those, over half were from marijuana.

These positive results do not indicate employees were under the influence;
they indicate employees had left-over traces in their bodies, which in the
case of marijuana can test positive for up to a month after usage.

No one wants drug or alcohol use in the workplace, but statistics certainly
do not justify the unreasonable search of the innocent mass of employees.
Iowa currently has an excellent workplace drug-testing law. A law
protecting the rights of employees while allowing employers to test when
they have probable cause. A law promoting rehabilitation of employees who
do have drug or alcohol problems.

I hope the members of our House of Representatives will see fit to stand up
for the majority of their constituents, working Iowans, and vote down the
new legislation.

Michael H. Dunn, 1412 S. Hampshire, Mason City.