Drug News You Can Use

A Prescription for Problems in W.Va.

Seventy employees of a West Virginia business went through random drug testing. Twelve of them, or 17.1 percent, failed.
That’s just one example of the growing concern about prescription drug abuse among those in manufacturing, mining, construction and other industries in the Mountain State and across the country.

A recent study by the National Institutes of Health revealed prescription drugs were to blame for 33 percent of opiate rehab admissions in 2009, up from just 8 percent a decade earlier.

Workers who are under the influence of painkillers such as Vicodin, OxyContin and Fentanyl often equate to a prescription for problems. In addition to the obvious safety issues, officials say drug abuse often results in less productivity, more absenteeism and theft.

Tools for drug testing: Oklahoma employers encouraged to update policies for new law

Employers should update their drug testing policies now to take full advantage of a beneficial state law taking effect Nov. 1.

“If you don’t change your policy by Nov. 1, you are contractually obligating yourself to the old law after Nov. 1,” said McAfee & Taft attorney Charles S. Plumb. “This is a good time to kind of wipe the slate clean and ask ourselves, ‘What do we need as far as drug testing?’” While employers face no deadline for changing their workplace drug testing policies, putting off this alignment prevents them from taking advantage of several improvements designed to help businesses improve workplace safety and better contain their unemployment and workers’ compensation costs, all by streamlining employee drug testing regulations.

Pot smokers likely to use other drugs

A study has found that people in their 20s who regularly smoke cannabis are up to three times more likely to use other illicit drugs.

The findings were based on a long-term study of nearly 2000 Victorian high school students who were first surveyed on their drug habits when they were teens and throughout their 20s.

It found that while cannabis use tended to fall as people headed towards 30, those who persisted in the habit used the drug more frequently as the years went by.

Those who smoked cannabis regularly were also found to be two to three times more likely to start using other illicit drugs, such as cocaine and amphetamines, than occasional users.

Hair Tests Gain Favor Over Urinalysis in Drug Screens by Larger Carriers

This story appears in the July 11 print edition of Transport Topics.

Hair tests, which could keep more drug-abusing drivers off the road, are starting to gain favor among larger carriers though the number using them still are few and far between, experts said.
C.R. England, Gordon Trucking and Roehl Transport, three Transport Topics Top 100 carriers, are recent converts to hair tests that were pioneered in trucking by J.B. Hunt Transport Services and later by Schneider National.

Proponents say hair tests have revealed as many as 12 times more positive tests, or failures, than the Department of Transportation’s mandatory urinalysis test, which tests for marijuana, cocaine, amphetamines, opiates and PCP. Hair tests can detect drugs at least 45 days after use, compared with just three or four days for urinalysis, several sources said.

“We feel pretty confident we will see the results that will make it worthwhile,” said Steve Gordon, chief operating officer at Gordon, which already disqualified two drivers in the first month that it did hair tests. “Hair is a more thorough test. We hope the industry follows in that direction.”

“We think [hair follicle] is actually a better test than urine,” said John Spiros, vice president of safety and compliance at Roehl, Marshfield, Wis., which started the tests in May. “Urine tests only give you recent results. Urine won’t pick up people who have a history of drug abuse.”

Though a few major fleets are doing hair samples, Ben Johnson, vice president of marketing for FleetScreen Ltd., Fort Worth, Texas, said fewer than 10 of his more than 3,000 carriers do the hair test, formally known as RIAH, or radio immuno assay of hair.

“The small to medium carrier just doesn’t have the financial resources a larger carrier has,” he told Transport Topics on June 28. “It’s because of the costs and the duplication of effort” since hair tests can’t be substituted for DOT’s urinalysis.

“The industrywide impact of being able to conduct a pre-employment drug test that reviews a longer screening history is a tremendous improvement over the current federally mandated requirements,” said Dustin England, vice president of C.R. England, which does hair tests on randomly selected candidates during the pre-employment process.

C.R. England found a positive rate of 11% in hair tests and 2.8% for urine tests when the company tested 2,000 candidates.

“Knowing we can keep more potentially dangerous drivers off the roads is a great feeling,” Dustin England said.

DOT last year proposed changes in testing procedures, which prompted American Trucking Associations to urge aggressive evaluation of hair tests.
However, ATA research analyst Abigail Potter told TT that ATA doesn’t expect action on hair testing until a separate review of testing by the Health and Human Services Department.

Both Don Osterberg, senior vice president at Schneider, and Ray Kubacki, CEO of testing firm Psychemedics, praised J.B. Hunt for pioneering the use of hair tests.
Osterberg said hair tests in trucking “still are in their infancy. There is not enough awareness of the success in detection.”

Kubacki said “it is a small group using hair samples, it’s true. The real significance is that two of the largest carriers are doing it.” Hunt ranks No. 8 on the Transport Topics 2010 listing of the Top 100 For-Hire Carriers in the United States and Canada, and Schneider is No. 9.

Osterberg told TT that Schneider had 964 positives out of 25,000 tests, while just 82 people failed the simultaneous urinalysis.

“That means there are 882 chronic users out there who aren’t driving an orange truck,” he said. “The bad news is they are out there driving for someone else, next to our families.”
“We view them as an obligation to the motoring public as a company in a safety sensitive industry that we have safe drivers on the road,” Osterberg said of hair tests.

“Once the economy improves more, you will see a greater increase in carriers adopting these tests,” Kubacki said. “The facts of life, which are incontrovertible, are that you identify more drug abusers with hair tests.”

Psychemedics, on its website, shows an 18% positive rate on a hair tests, compared with 2.7% on a urine test.
The tests were done on 774 workers at office equipment vendor Steelcase Co., Kubacki said.

Johnson said it’s far more difficult to cheat on a hair test because a person’s hair, typically taken from behind the ear, is unique. On the other hand, specimens can be doctored during the urine collection process if a laboratory isn’t vigilant in administering the test, he noted.

Kubacki said, “Hair testing, while relatively new in the trucking industry,” isn’t in corporate America. He said 10% of the Fortune 500 companies use his firm’s service.

Ind. first to require drug tests for job training

A new Indiana rule requiring drug tests for unemployed people participating in state-funded job training programs reflects a hard stance many states are taking regarding public assistance as they struggle with limited financial resources.

The U.S. Department of Labor says Indiana is the first state to require drug testing of people seeking job training. But at least 30 states have considered requiring drug tests for those receiving government assistance, including Florida, which began requiring drug tests of welfare applicants on July 1.

Workforce Development Commissioner Mark Everson says Indiana’s change reflects the state’s economic realities and also some frustration from business owners, who’ve questioned why drug users should be participating in the job training program when they won’t pass workplace drug screening.