A DOPEY PROPOSAL

During a discussion of proposed changes in the city of Nicholasville's
employee drug-testing policy, citizen Gerald Deeken asked an obvious
question: Is there a drug problem among city employees?

Oh, no, the elected promptly replied; there is no problem.

Then they continued to talk about how they were going to spend thousands of
dollars of your tax money to solve a problem they say doesn't exist.

What had these people been smoking?

I can understand the need for requiring random drug tests of men or women
who are going to be carrying Glocks and driving two tons of steel at
breakneck speeds through city streets in pursuit of criminals. Or of guys
who have to spring up out of bed at 3 a.m. and minutes later run straight
into a raging inferno. You want to make darn sure they have their wits
about them at all times.

But I can't see why a billing clerk or a meter reader should have to
subject herself to the indignity of peeing into a cup while under
surveillance so that someone else can study the sample and determine
whether she has been snorting coke or hitting the bottle during lunch breaks.

Body fluids are somewhat private possessions, and call me a shameless civil
libertarian, but I don't think they should be confiscated without good
reason -- such as a reasonable suspicion that an employee has done
something wrong.

It is just as humiliating as having to take a lie detector test or fill out
one of those psychological exams that ask personal questions, like, "Do you
ever feel misunderstood?"

I think that in some places, it's part of an overall strategy to beat down
the hourly wage people and keep them submissive. It's a way of saying, "We
don't trust you from day one, you little weasel, and we're going to be
keeping an eye on you."

If there is anything that constitutes "unreasonable search and seizure" as
prohibited by the Bill of Rights, it is random drug testing. Employers
certainly have a right to expect that their employees not be wasted on the
job. But a person who has given his employers no cause to be suspicious
shouldn't have to prove his innocence in order to keep his situation. It's
un-American.

Furthermore, drug testing doesn't prove that an employee is in a state of
altered consciousness while at her computer.

In the first place, they ought to call it marijuana testing, rather than
drug testing, because that's what it is. A person could go to a dance club
and do lines of cocaine all night on Friday, and by Monday morning, it
wouldn't show up in her system because cocaine, like most drugs, is water
soluble. But pot is fat-soluble (it's the only recreational drug that is),
which means that it stays in the body for months, or as the city's drug
testing consultant, Paul Combs, put it when he spoke to the city commission
two weeks ago: "forever."

If an employee takes a vacation to Amsterdam, Toronto, London or anyplace
else where cannabis is decriminalized, tries some, and returns to work two
weeks later and tests positive, he can lose his job, even though he has
broken no state or federal laws and has done nothing that might hinder his
work performance. Or if he hasn't burned a joint, but happened to breathe
heavy secondhand smoke while riding in a car with other people who were
indulging their nasty habit, he might be busted when he gets back to the
office.

On the other hand, if an employee were someone who likes to fry his brain
on LSD every weekend or eat psilocybin mushrooms and become Mr. Hyde, his
boss wouldn't know it, because the tests don't look for such mind-blowing
chemicals.

OK, so you say that an employer has a right to hire someone who doesn't use
harmful substances, whether on the job or off, and you would be right. An
employer also has a right not to hire people who smoke cigarettes or are
fat from eating bacon cheeseburgers and jelly doughnuts -- especially if
he's paying for their health insurance. But let him find out on his own. If
an employer can analyze a person's urine to learn if he's smoking dope,
what's next: picking through his stool to determine whether he's eating right?

Then there's the expense involved. Combs told the commission that random
drug testing would cost between $30 and $45 per test. The city has about
200 employees, so do the math; if you test each employee only once during
the year (and it could be more than once), you're looking at spending
between $6,000 and $9,000 for a program that doesn't even prove on-the-job
impairment. That money could be better used for other things, such as
giving police officers raises so that they will stay here in Nicholasville
and help rid our town of drug dealers and thieves.

The truth of the matter is that random drug testing is expensive, intrusive
and ineffective.

It's easy to tell if an employee is stoned on the job, and if he is
suspected of being high or drunk, then maybe the city should have a policy
to allow the employee to take a test to answer the accusation against him.
But to spend thousands of dollars a year to randomly test employees who are
not even suspect is downright dopey.