JOB SEARCHES Screening for drugs is being cut back

Cutting costs is one reason some companies are phasing out drug screening.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
They are the staples of a modern-day job search: a polished r & eacute;sum & eacute;, glowing references and a clean urine sample.
Without fulfilling that last criteria for a satisfactory drug screening, 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. The tests have been credited with everything from higher productivity to decreased worker compensation claims. 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 and hiring has slowed, the $737 million drug-testing industry's expansion in workplaces has slowed accordingly.
And some employers are also less willing to spend money for drug testing if they do not believe that it contributes to the bottom line.
Loss of business
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 per year.
Laboratories also struggle to provide accurate testing results despite "counterproducts" -- the array of additives, cleansers and gizmos, readily available on the Internet, that employees can utilize to circumvent a positive drug test. Critics question whether businesses reap tangible benefits from the urine-in-a-cup routine.
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, with heavy promotion by the federal government. 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.
Meldron Young, the association's human resources practice consultant, said drug tests remain a standard element of most employers' hiring procedures.
Economic issue
But the weak economy has prompted businesses to review spending, and some have eliminated drug screening for employees whose duties do not pose safety risks.
"They probably won't waste their money trying to do it," Young said. "You have people that are moving into the upper echelons of corporate America now that kind of take the stance that if it's not affecting the person's performance, it's not an issue."
Joseph Halligan, chief executive of Haltom City, Texas-based PharmChem, linked the downturn in testing, at least in part, to the current hiring slump.
"If you think about the amount of hiring being done at the moment, needless to say, that segment of the business is down," Halligan said.
Although the notion that drug users make for bad employees has a common-sense appeal, Young 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.
"In leaner economies, corporations tend to cut back a little bit," she said. "It's scary when you think about what that might cost. You can't afford not to do it, really."
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.