COMPANIES PHASING OUT COSTLY DRUG SCREENINGS

In tough economy, firms need better evidence the tests save them money They
are the staples of a modern-day job search: a polished resume, glowing
references and a clean urine sample.

Without fulfilling that last criteria for a satisfactory drug screen,
applicants at many U.S. companies can forget about employment.

In the almost two decades since the federal government launched its
"drug-free workplace" promotions, tests for illicit drugs have become
standard for thousands of employers. Tests are given to 25 million people
annually, with an additional 25 million workers subject to screening.

But as thousands of displaced workers hunt for new jobs in the current
economic slump, the $737 million drug-testing industry's expansion in
workplaces has slowed accordingly.

Some employers also are less willing to spend money for drug testing if they
do not believe it contributes to the bottom line.

Growth of the drug-testing industry, which averaged more than 12.5 percent
annually during the 1990s, has tapered off to only about 1 percent a year.

Laboratories also struggle to provide accurate test results. Employees have
easy access to "counterproducts" -- an array of additives, cleansers and
gizmos, used to circumvent a positive drug test.

Workplace drug tests -- primarily of job applicants, but also of existing
employees, in some cases -- took off during the "just say no" era of the
1980s. They typically detect opiates, cocaine derivatives, barbiturates,
methamphetamine and marijuana, revealing drug use from several days or
perhaps even months earlier.

Sixty-one percent of companies now screen job applicants, and 50 percent
test their existing employees, according to the American Management
Association's most recent survey in 2001. That is down from the 1996 peak,
when 68 percent of employers screened candidates.

Although the notion that drug users make for bad employees has a
common-sense appeal, Meldron Young, the association's human resources
practice consultant, said companies generally have not quantified the
before-and-after results of their anti-drug campaigns.

Without evidence of drug testing's advantages to their own operations, some
managers are less willing than they used to be to spend roughly $30 apiece
to test applicants and employees, he said.

"Employers right now are so in survival mode," Young said. "It doesn't
contribute to the bottom line right now."

That outlook troubles Becky Vance, executive director of Drug Free Business
Houston.

"You can't afford not to do it, really," she said.

Vance's organization encourages Texas companies to test all job applicants
and to randomly screen employees. Drug users are less able to function at
work, she says, and they take more days off and have higher health-care
bills.

Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the NORML Foundation, a research
organization that supports marijuana legalization, disagrees.

He believes employers have good reason to be concerned about workers who are
high on the job. But urine tests are far more likely to nab employees who
use drugs at a Saturday night party than those who are impaired during work
hours, he said.

And he believes drug-testing policies are aimed more at morality than
productivity.

"This is about trying to find out if somebody is breaking the law and then
holding them accountable for it," he said.

According to the American Council for Drug Education, substance abusers,
when compared to nonabusers, are:

. Ten times more likely to miss work.

. 3.6 times more likely to be involved in on-the-job accidents.

. Five times more likely to file a workers compensation claim.

. 33 percent less productive.

. Responsible for health-care costs that are three times as high.

Some opponents of blanket testing question the accuracy of that data. The
American Civil Liberties Union, in a 1999 report, argued that drug-testing
programs are not cost-effective.

The ACLU said that the federal government spent $11.7 million to test nearly
29,000 workers in 1990.

Only 153 employees flunked, putting the cost of finding each user at
$77,000, according to the ACLU.