Lucylastic
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http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/01/the-plot-against-paul-lepage/424014/
Faux tough guys Scott Walker and Rick Scott bluster with bravado about being tough on crime and on drugs. Who benefits from drug testing, besides them and their cronies? Walker, who can’t decide his position on evolution, comes down strongly against the science on the issue of drug testing, having just proposed it as a condition for receiving public benefits, such as food stamps, and even unemployment benefits.
Walker, and Rick Scott before him, have been vociferous in their claims that such testing will save the country vast sums, as well as make us all safer. They are, after all, tough on crime.
Scott, for example, claimed that drug abuse was “much higher” in welfare recipients. In fact, the rate was 2%, compared to 9.4% in the general population.
In a story about this, 02/02/12, The Daily Show’s Aasif Mandvi challenged Fl. Rep. Scott Plakin, who insisted citizens should “be happy” for the opportunity to be tested, to undergo drug testing himself, since his salary is entirely at the expense of taxpayers. Mandvi then does the same to Gov. Scott. Shockingly, both declined. The priceless video is here.
Mitt Romney, too, has come out for mandatory testing: “Well my own view is, it’s a great idea. People who are receiving welfare benefits, government benefits, we should make sure they’re not using those benefits to pay for drugs. I think it’s an excellent idea.
Getting the 2014 New Year off to a good start, the Federal District court for Florida has forbidden suspicionless drug testing for applicants for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), as being an unconstitutional violation of the protection against unreasonable government searches.
Low rates of drug use have been shown in multiple states besides Florida, including only 1/800 welfare recipients in Tennessee, vs. 8% in the general population. Similarly, Utah found 0.2 percent of the total welfare recipient population positive, vs. 6% of the population who admitted to using drugs. These 12 cases cost the state $30,000.
Despite the evidence of low drug use in welfare recipients and that costs of administering such tests greatly exceed any benefits savings, Republican states continue to propose such laws…even though they have previously been struck down as unconstitutional.
Drug testing increasingly is becoming part of our surveillance society, spuriously sold to the public as making us safer. Where’s the data?
The rate of drug use in the US among full-time workers averaged 9.5%, according to the government’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Screening is commonly done as part of pre-employment—42.9% of full-time workers, or more than 47 million adults, reported being subjected to this humiliating process as a condition of getting a job. (2004) Further, 32 million reported ongoing random drug testing at work. A 2010 study reported about 130 million drug screens. Who profits from this?
As I explained in 2013, “Estimates of accuracy of the drug tests are < 1% for false positive confirmatory tests, and perhaps 5% false negatives, due to where the thresholds are commonly set. Using this as an example, and an 8% drug usage rate, we would get, in a 1000 tested workers:
Drug present Drug absent total
Test pos 76 9 85
Test neg 4 911 915
total 80 920 1000
4 people will be reported “clean,” a false negative, though they use drugs.
Of 920 who did not use drugs, 1%, or ~9 people will show up as positive.
Of 85 people who test positive, 9/85, or 10.6% will erroneously be identified as drug users. So while 1% error rate (false positive) sounds good, 10% of the positives will be false.”
Many drugs can cause false positive results, including ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin), cold or hay fever remedies, or quinolone antibiotics, for example.
Who benefits from drug testing?
Being tough on crime and “deadbeats” is an easy road to popularity and makes nice sound bites, though we’ve seen the data isn’t there to support the testing either on rates of abuse or cost savings.
There is a huge industry now surrounding drug testing. Hoffmann-La Roche was an early leader, beginning with a lucrative Pentagon contract to test returning Vietnam War veterans. The company, maker of Valium, then went on to initiate a major PR and lobbying campaign to “mobilize corporate America to confront the illicit drug problem in their workplaces,” calling it “Corporate Initiatives for a Drug-Free Workplace.”
The Drug & Alcohol Testing Industry Association (DATIA) employs lobbyists to try to prevent decriminalization of marijuana and to expand workplace drug testing—again, something that is opposed by many physicians and researchers.
For example, Dr. George Lundberg, former editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association and of Medscape, has decried the cost of such testing, given the absence of evidence to support it. At a cost of ~$45 per drug screen, it would cost ~$5,431,995,000 to screen all 120,711,000 full-time employees. As Dr. Lundberg stated, “This is terrific for the laboratory industry and all the attorneys who will argue these cases . . . but should we spend that kind of money?’ He wrote. ‘In fact, we have not found one proper cost-benefit analysis of this process’ in the medical literature.” Dr. Lundberg, among others, has expressed outrage at “chemical McCarthyism.”
Conveniently, Rick Scott pushed mandatory drug testing—provided, in part, by his wife’s company, Solantic. Scott transferred his $62 million stake in the company to his wife only a few months before mandating drug testing for state employees and welfare recipients. Many companies provide drug testing, including Quest, LabCorps, Roche, and Mobile Diagnostic Testing. There are programs by DATIA and others on how to start your own testing business or become a contractor.
Another major criticism of pre-employment or random drug tests is that the focus is misplaced—what is critical to know is whether someone is impaired at work. As Northwestern University researchers Drs. Levine and Rennie have observed, “Drug testing is arguably less important than addressing the performance impact of overnight work, circadian rhythm disruption, and overwork.”
Further, drug testing is more likely to detect marijuana than cocaine, and entirely misses alcohol, more commonly implicated in workplace accidents. Performance based testing would be far more rational and effective.
It is easier—and more profitable—to focus on testing for drugs taken without a prescription. If you have a script for a sedative or something to reduce anxiety, then pharmaceutical companies profit even more.
DATIA also is expanding their market. Elaine Taule, founder of NMS Management Systems, gave tips on marketing, saying that while they had focused on workplace testing “you can envision school testing as the next frontier.”
Drug testing appears to be a lucrative industry, like the TSA, sold to the public by lobbyists and politicians assuring us that it will somehow make us safer, without solid evidence to back up this claim.
Testing is inaccurate, expensive, and furthers an unhealthy climate of mistrust in the workplace. In hospitals, for example, there is widespread drug testing, GPS tracking systems that monitor employees constantly, systems that track response times to call lights, fingerprint scans to clock in and out, and keyed badges that track your movements. This is not conducive to a healthy, happy, or productive work environment.
Who benefits? Only the monitoring industries. Aren’t there better uses of our energies and taxpayer monies? How about food security, education, and repairing our crumbling bridges, to start?
Until then, I like Catherine Rampell’s suggestion—following the Willie Sutton principle, go where the money is. Rampell suggests that if we’re serious about saving money by penalizing users of illegal drugs, that we drug test the wealthy, who burden all of us with their $1.4 trillion in tax breaks. She goes on to ask, “But as long as they’re clean, they should have nothing to hide. Right?”
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