BENEFITS OF A DRUG TESTING POLICY

A& K Earthmovers Praised For Its Low Rate Of Positive Tests

Attendees at the quarterly Churchill Community Coalition meeting
learned Wednesdaythatasoliddrugtestingpolicycan save small businesses
money on insurance, workers compensation claims and help weed out poor
job candidates. Senior Deputy District Attorney Lane Mills
saidbusinessownersneedtobeawareoftheir liability when one of their
employees be-comes injured or injures another person while on the job
under the influence of drugs of alcohol. Employers could face civil or
criminal lia-bilities if a worker is involved in an injury acci-dent.
As an example, a daycare owner would be criminally liable if a worker,
under the in-fluence of drugs, injured a child while on the job, Mills
said. The stakes are too high to not perform drug testing at large
corporations and govern-ment entities, Mills said, and he urged small
businesses to implement a consistent drug testing program and keep
good records. DaveOakdenwithSandCClaimsServices Inc. in Las Vegas said
some of his clients re-ceive discountedinsuranceifthebusinesshas a
drug testing policy in place.

Some insurance companies will only accept businesses that perform drug
testing, Oakden said, which im-proves rates because the "good"
companies - those that drug test - won't need to sup-port the"bad"
companies. Because three-quarters of drug users hold jobs, it's in the
employers best interest to implement a drug testing policy, Oakden
said. He gave examples of how workers at-tempt to defraud the workers
compensa-tion program by abusing, and selling, pre-scription drugs. He
added those workers also cost the business through lower pro-ductivity
and high absenteeism. Pre-employment drug testing, paid by potential
employees, is good screening mechanism, Oakden said, while random drug
testing keeps workers clean if they value their jobs. Post-accident
drug testing also needs to be performed within 24 hours of the
accident to be admissible in the workers compensation claim. Kathy
Bernard, owner of On-Site Associates Drug and Alcohol Testing, said in
the 12 years she's been testing workers, the trend to use drugs has
grown worse.

She added very few small companies in Fallon or Fernley drug test on a
regular basis. About 50 percent of the positive drug tests Bernard
sees are for methampheta-mine, followed by marijuana, cocaine and
opiates, which include prescription drugs and heroin.

At the local level, the number of 26-34 year olds using drugs is four
times the national average, Bernard said. She broke out figures for
positive drug tests by industry and compared the nation-al averages to
what she's seen at the local level - and the news isn't good.
Industries like agriculture, social assistance, trans-portation,
manufacturing and mining all post positive rates twice as high at the
local level than the national level. Bernard praised A&K Earthmovers
for helping to show a lower percentage of pos-itive drug rates locally
in the construction sector compared to the national rates. "If you're
not drug testing, you've got a problem," Bernard said. "You're putting
your life's work at risk." She said children"live and learn at mom and
dad's feet" and companies should con-sider offering rehabilitation to
show they value their employees. Jack Hisey, safety and risk manager
at A&K Earthmovers, said everybody at the company is included in the
pool for ran-dom drug testing, which is handled by an outside,
impartial consultant. The company performs drug testing at the
pre-employment stage, upon reason-able suspicion and after accidents.

If em-ployees fails a drug test, they are given the opportunity to
participate in an assistance program at their own expense.

A substance abuse professional works with employees to determine what
type of counseling is needed and when a return-to-duty test can be
performed. "When you have a regular drug testing program, your
employees know you're seri-ous," Hisey said, adding that most
employ-ees like the testing policy because they know it helps ensure
their safety from po-tentially dangerous co-workers.