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Text File | 2003-06-29 | 20KB | 341 lines

. .:::::. .::::::::. ...:::::::::.. :::::::::::: ..:::::::::::::::::.. ::::: :::: .::: ::::::: :::. :::::. : :: ::::: :: :::::::. : ::: : :::::::::. ::: :::::::: ::: ::::: ::::: : :::: ::::: oxic :::......:::: hock .:::::::. ::::::::::: ::::::::::: ::::::::: presents Drug Tests : the shape of things to come... by Bloody Afterbirth Toxic File #63 from HIGH TIMES, July 1990, Issue #179. Article by Elin Wilder. Centre Of Eternity : 615.552.5747 40 Megs Lotsa Files Headquarters of Toxic Shock Tudor Nightmare Village : 615.928.6071 Lunatic Labs : 213.655.0691 ?? Megs Lotsa Good Files !@#$%^&*&^%$#@!@#$%^&*&^%$#@!@#$%^&*&^%$#@!@#$%^&*&^%$#@!@#$%^&*&^%$#@! Yet another highly informative and thought provoking file from the greatest of all magazines, HIGH TIMES. As has become my habit, as 'payment' for using their articles, I tell you, the reader, how to subscribe and get all the things I'm leaving out. HIGH TIMES SUBSCRIPTIONS P.O. Box 410 Mt. Morris, IL 61054 United States Foreign (in US funds) One Year : $29.95 $37.45 Two Years: $54.95 $68.95 They mail it in a black cornstarch bag that decomposes within one year. If you have a credit card, you can call 800.435.0715 (In Illinois, it's 800.892.0753) Is the government using urinalysis to help create a Super Race? Will drug tests in the future reveal your genetic assests? Read on... *&^%$#@!@#$%^&*&^%$#@!@#$%^&*&^%$#@!@#$%^&*&^%$#@!@#$%^&*&^%$#@!@#$%^&* Over 80 percent of Fortune 500 companies conduct urine tests as a prerequisite for employment. While you may never work for a Fortune 500 company, they set the trends that other companies follow. And 80 percent is a whopping increase over the three percent of Fortune 500 companies that required mandatory drug testing for job applicants seven years ago. According to the latest government statistics, the majority of Americans approve of drug testing as an appropriate means of obtaining a drug-free work environment. A recent poll conducted by the US Chamber of Commerce's Institute for a Drug Free Workplace, in conjunction with the Gallup Poll, indicated that 97 percent of all Americans believe random drug testing is appropriate for employees in the following safety sensitive professions: airline pilots, transportation workers, truck drivers, construction workers, health care employees, and utility workers. Most Americans must be completely unaware of how inaccurate and unreliable these tests are, for when they were asked about drugs tests in non-safety sensitive fields, the pollsters reported that 73 percent of their group approved testing of factory workers, 67 percent approved tests for office workers, and 69 wanted testing for media professionals. These statistics were arrived at by polling 1,007 Americans whom the government felt were representative of the entire nation, with an error factor of three percent. [BA:Incidentally, NORML exposed Hoffman-La Roche Laboratories, the nation's largest drug testing company, as one of the primary backers of the Institute which took that survey. A conflict of interests if there ever was one. In addition, some of the findings from the poll that were NOT shared with the country until NORML uncovered them were: * Only 26 percent of those polled supported drug testing without "reservations", "serious limitations", or "not at all." * Less than one quarter of those polled had "ever seen or heard of on-the-job drug use." * Nearly all of those polled agreed with this statement : "If employees are tested for drug use, top management also should be tested."] Even worse, stricter regulations for collecting urine samples are being enforced -- such as witnessed specimen collection. The new "Drug Testing Guidelines" issued by the Federal Department of Health and Human Services has created a new job in relation to the testing of federal employees -- a "Collection Site Person." This is setting a precedent for the surveillance of workers in the name of making substitution of other people's clean urine samples a more difficult way to beat drug tests. FALSE POSITIVES However, even the use of "clean" urine, free from traces of illegal drugs, whether borrowed or bought, can register a false positive. Food and medication the donor igested that aren't illegal can show up as drugs. Poppy seeds (from a bagel, roll of bread, or Danish pastry) can cause a false positive for heroin or other opiates. Vicks Formula 44 doubles as codeine. Advil can show up as pot. And Nyquil can test positive for speed. According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the urine tests most commonly in use today yield false positives 10 to 30 percent of the time. The ACLU also noted that when 120 forensic scientists, including some who worked for drug test manufacturers, were asked "Is there anybody here who would submit urine for drug testing if his career, reputation, freedom or livelihood depended on it," not one of them said "Yes." Career expert Martine Yate is well aware of the increased use of drug testing in the workplace, as well as the inaccuracy of the tests, and he suggests that anyone seeking employment do the following : "When you're asked the question, `Are you willing to take a drug test as a condition of employment,' if you expect a job offer you have to say yes...That's okay because there's a good chance you won't be asked to actually do it. But when it moves from the hypothetical into the practical, `Are you prepared to take a drug test five minutes from now, or a half hour from now,' what I suggest is that you protect yourself by saying the following:`Yes, I am more than happy to take a drug test as a condition of employment, however, I have seen on the television, heard on the radio, and read in the newspapers that these tests sometimes generate false positives (and this is the key phrase) and I am assured that you will not take offense if I ask you the prescription drugs, the non-prescription drugs, common foods, liquids and spices liable to generate a false positive. I am also assured that in the event of a false positive you will use a backup test to either confirm or to prove that positive.'" As for the most commonly asked question, "How long does marijuana stay in the system," the experts I spoke to, including a former narcotics agent and the head of a private lab, disagreed. While they indicated that marijuana coul dbe detected within the system for up to thirty days, they couldn't come to an agreement on anything beyond that. One of the leading authorities on drug testing in the country, Dr. John Morgan of CUNY Medical School, had an interesting observation. One heavy pot smoker he knows of showed positive test results six weeks after kicking the pot habit, while another he spoke with showed up negative, even though he smoked a joint minutes before the test, and was high during the test. Apparently, these drug tests don't show anything until AFTER you get stoned, and after the THC metabolite has been passed through your system. DRUG TEST ABUSE If this weren't strange enough, these "drug preventative" urine tests don't just finger you for illegal substances, but for medical conditions as well. Although it's nearly impossible to prove, there's little doubt that some people are being discriminated against if they are found to be taking medication for hypertension, epilepsy, depression and diabetes, among other chronic illnesses. In 1987, a urinalysis lab caught the Washing, D.C. police department subjecting women's urine samples to pregnancy tests without their knowledge or permission. This is an example of one of the most common types of urine sample misuse. Although the ACLU took the offending police department to task for this, their action didn't get jobs or compensation for the women who were already discriminated against. In this instance the lab was the good guy -- acting on the employees behalf. Unfortunately, not all labs are as diligent as that one. As the demand for on-the-job drug testing has increased, so have the number of labs to accomodate employers. The catch is that ANYONE can set up a lab for the purposes of urine testing. There are no national standards at present that regulate labs in relation to drug testing. As a result, they make a lot of mistakes. Although figures vary on the percentage of lab errors, "up to 40 percent" suggested one expert, even the government is aware that there is a need for the regulation of labs if drug testing is to remain the best way of policing drug use by American workers. At a time when the country is in a state of hysteria over employee drug use, the fact that private labs continue to go unmonitored or regulated has ominous implications for immediate and future employment. A good example of what's going on happened in New York recently when a large number of transit employees were randomly tested for drugs. All of those employees were subsequently fired, until someone realized that every single one of the tests had come back "positive." The lab had obviously made a mistake. While all the transit workers won a cash settlement, their lives were effectively ruined. And what if no one had ever noticed, or if they screwed up only half of the tests? BEYOND URINALYSIS Other tests are being developed for use in the near future. The most frightening of these is HAIR ANALYSIS. Already developed and ready for use, the only thing standing in the way of widespread hair testing is the cost. As we speak, technicians are hard at work developing a means of making it less cost-prohibitive to employers. While it may be more dignified to give up a strand of hair than a urine sample, be advised that hair analysis testing has the capacity to detect any chemical you have ingested within the last eight months (depending on the length of your hair). Hair analysis is just the beginning, though. Looming in the future is GENETIC TESTING. At the moment, genetic testing is primarily used by scientists trying to determine the origins of certain illnesses, and on fetuses (!) in an effort to find out what the chances are that they'll be born with hereditary health handicaps. Testing on fetuses is not widespread as yet, and being hotly debated since predisposition to any genetic order does not guarantee that the child will actually develop that disorder. The same is true for genetic testing on adults. Because you're genetically predisposed to diabetes does not guarantee that you'll get it. However, knowing that you're predisposed to diabetes might sway an employer to choose another applicant over you in order to keep possible health insurance costs down in the future. More horrible to contemplate are the other uses for genetic testing : Weeding out prespective employees for racial characteristics, mental makeup, or sexual tendencies. Don't forget that the Nazis did the first genetic testing in order to create a super race, and that's the shape of things to come as far as drug tests are concerned. NARCS ON YOUR JOB? "What about my rights?" you ask. Guess what -- you don't have very many left. For all this talk about the 200th anniversary of the Bill of Rights, the Fourth Amendment means next to nothing once you are in the private employer's domain. (The rights of public service employees are better, but we'll cover that later.) If you're like most Americans, you work for a privately owned company. Once you walk through their doors, you're not protected by the Bill of Rights. This means if you find out, as I myself did, that they are recording and/or monitoring your phone calls or VDT input, there is little you can do about it except ask them to stop. This is only possible if you know it's going on. I was lucky, my employer was unaware of the bugging as well, and when he found out he insisted it be stopped. Not everyone is so lucky. The increased anxiety on the part of employers concerning substance abuse in the workplace has increased on-the-job surveillance. This canmean anything from monitoring and/or recording phone calls and video display terminal input to undercover cops infiltrating the workplace. A former police detective who now heads a company that deal in undercover operations and drug education explained to me how it works. "We go in and we evaluate the situation as an independent source," he said. "Management might have received anonymous tips, gotten complaints from other employees, or maybe they've been finding paraphenalia out on the floor and all of a sudden they start seeing increased absenteeism and low productivity hampering the quality of their product. They suspect that something is taking place that they can't see during day-to-day activities. So what we do is provide a credible investigator, who then becomes the eyes and ears of the corporation, recording everything he sees and hears." These investigators spy on workers, taking notes on what they see going on, report on those who they believe are involved, and compose a written evaluation that confirms or denies the company's suspicions that there's a drug problem within their walls. After approximately 90 days, a determination is made as to how the company would like to handle the situation. One of the questions surrounding these undercover operations is whether all the information they turn over to the companies is strictly related to illegal drug use. An American Civil Liberties attorney has this to say on the topic of undercover investigation in the workplace : "The practice is becoming more and more common. It harkens back to company spies, Pinkertons, and now in-store detectives. It's very problematic. It's not regulated by the Constitution at all. It's a very dangerous practice and it has the same characteristics as drug testing. Confidences you would share in the workplace are not necessarily ones you would want your employer to overhear, and although they say that they only give the employer drug-related information, there's no way to know." Anonymous tips and drug testing can also be used as aweapon against unpopular employees. For instance, the ACLU recently represented several employees of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Their supervisor was angry at them for blowing the whistle on them. This plant has a drug hotline where anyone could phone in an anonymous top against a fellow employee accusing them of using drugs, and anyone reported was then immediately called in for a drug test. These six "whistle blowers" were called in on the hotline and subjected to drug tests. The ACLU quickly filed a complaint with the Department of Labor which they ultimately won, but the whole process took years. "Those people basically lost their jobs, we think, because of their whistle-blowing activity," added the ACLU attorney, "and it's easy to imagine how it could be used to thwart a union organizing drive or something like that...particularly in today's climate where if you're labeled as a drug user, basically your life is over, that's it. It's such an incredible stigma during the era of the war on drugs that it's a very powerful weapon in the hands of management today." Employees in the public sector (ie:government employees) are in better shape than private sector employees because the government has to adhere to the Bill of Rights and people who work for Uncle Sam are therefore protected by the Fourth Amendment. This is changing as the rules are bent in the case of public sector employees who are "responsible for public safety." In two recent cases, the majority court held that urine tests are searches but, in the case of these particular employees (customs guards and railroad workers) testing was allowed without probable cause on the ground that their Fourth Amendment rights were outweighed by the government's interest in maintaining a drug-free workplace. [BA:thought the rights were inalienable...] FIGHTING BACK How can we be counted and make our voices heard? First of all, bring the issues of drug testing and surveillance to the attention of your union. These are issues that can be put on the table for collective bargaining. Impress upon union leaders that privacy and freedom in the workplace is equally important as pay raises and other benefits. If you don't have a union, and 80 percent of American workers do not, start one, or discreetly start a campaign and petition to stop bugging and testing practices in your workplace. (Be careful. Remember:Big Brother is watching.) Call the local chapter of the AFL/CIO to find out how to start a union in your area. Any time you see a story relating to these issues, take the time to write letters to the editor of your local papers or magazines. You might inspire them to investigate further into abuses and misuses of testing and bugging by management. You should be advised that seven states do have legislation that protects the rights of employees and job applicants. These states are : Montana, Iowa, Vermont, Minnesota, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. In these states you cannot be tested without probable cause. Vermont's laws go even further, citing that an employer cannot test at all unless they have available to their employees a "bone fide rehabilitation program." That's the good news. The bad news is the new bi-partisan bill called the Borne-Hatch Bill that's being sold as a way to regulate lab standards. What it really does is remove any threat of an employer from being sued by an employee in the future. Already, most law suits brought by employees against employers in relation to drug testing have been lost, but some have been won. Removing that small threat will only open the glood gates for more random testing. Worst of all it will supercede the state laws mentioned before. Write to your elected officials, and start a campaign to get everyone to write and/or petition local officials. Fight the Borne-Hatch bill that's threatening our cibil liberties. Stay informed and active. Contact your local chapter of the American Civil Liberities Union and ask how you can get involved with their Task Force on Civil Liberties and receive their newsletters. Join NORML, and ask for their drug testing literature. And join the Freedom Fighters. Work with your local state chapter head to think of new ways to fight back. Ultimately, drug testing is being used as an excuse to take away all of our freedoms and create a chemical police state. If you and the people you know don't stop it, who will? (c)opied right from HIGH TIMES June 1990 Bloody Afterbirth/Toxic Shock Freedom Fighters 211 East 43rd St. New York, New York 10017 Membership is $15. You get a card, a year's subscription to their newsletter, invitations to pro-pot rallies, HIGH TIMES parties, and other special events. Make check payable to Trans-High Corp.