To avoid addictive folks who will have a high incidence of no-show when on a binge. Or long absences while in jail.

I can imagine what the theory is, but does it make sense in practice? Do you know which industries it tends to apply to? Would a developer be asked to take a drug test?

It's interesting, because I've worked with a lot of people in a lot of places over the years and I've never seen drugs as a problem that impedes workplace attendance / performance. Alcohol / hangovers, sure - plenty of times - but they're not testing for that, right?

IIRC all US government contractors have to be tested on hire. Most of the large temp firms also do drug testing in the US (in my experience at least.) Never tested for booze, though everywhere I've worked on site has made it clear that you will be drug tested and breathalyzed in case of an on-the-job accident.

As i've moved up in job quality it has gone from "we will test you aggressively to see if you do drugs" to "why would we care about this?"

Practically it is very stupid because the heroin/meth/cocaine type drugs become undetectable within days while pot takes weeks.

It's a dumb US thing, basically.

"IIRC all US government contractors have to be tested on hire"

That must be a new -- post 2007 -- thing, then.

Sorry, you're right, it might be DoD only.

Developer here. Asked to take a test, to work as an Austin-based employee of a Chicago company, owned by a Texas company, that owned (among other things) a warehouse that shipped guns purchased through their brick & mortar stores.

You tend to see drug tests a lot in retail, fast food, and many other low-wage low-skill jobs. I truthfully have no idea how effective that is in weeding out people who would be generally unreliable, but that's often the justification given by managers.

I'm sure there are some ultraconservative companies that drug test everyone — including developers and senior managers — but those are few and far between in comparison.

Unfortunately, drug tests are yet another hurdle poor people have to clear in order to earn a living wage.

Outside of the red tape domains, like banking and government, I've never been drug tested as a developer. The idea that a low skill worker is more likely to be on drugs is classism. Low skill workers really get no autonomy. They are drug tested, have to clock in and out, and even have monitored lunch/bathroom breaks. It's kind of disgusting to think about.

There certainly is some of that, but there's also different requirements for customer service positions where being in a specific place at a specific time is a core part of the job.

There's at least a few places out there run by Mormons who do hair-tests on their employees and won't hire you if you've been drinking alcohol. Even for high-level managers, executives and the like. (Enough of them that I've run into one person talking about her employer doing that, anyway.)

I work at a large telecom company and we drug test everybody.

Incidentally, it's quite awkward if you're currently employed when you get the new offer - as I was. The lab that collected the urine sample opened early in the morning for "regular" work but only accepted drug test samples from 10 AM to 3 PM on weekdays.

Like Dell.

I'm not sure they can test for alcohol since it is federally legal (I know that most places would test for on the job incidents however. I'm meaning it in a "drug test" style screening). Aside from that, I'm not sure how long you can find traces of it in your system. I wouldn't guess it to be longer than 48 hours.

EDIT: parentheses content.

CO allowed a company to fire an employee for testing positive for THC. It's fully legal there.

Also, health care companies have been allowed to prohibit employees from using tobacco.

Private company can test you for being a Democrat or being gay. I don't see why not alcohol.

How do you test for either of those?

They made me do it when I worked at an investment bank.

Outside of jobs where it's pretty easy to hurt someone if you're intoxicated (construction, etc.), my personal theory is that it's all about control.

As far as I know companies use piss tests, which don't detect most hard drugs after a few days. They detect pot for weeks. Hair tests will detect anything forever. They are more expensive but if companies actually cared about not hiring people who do hard drugs they would have to do them.

The only purpose I can see for it is that it is a legal leash they can tie to the employee to exert control on their lives. There's lots of other things companies would like to be able to fire you for, but they're either illegal or impossible to detect. Drug testing is one they're allowed to do.

I can understand drug testing people if they cause an accident, are intoxicated at work, etc. but to do it as a matter of course for employment is just to show you who's boss.

You got some...interesting replies. I think it's mainly a CYA/insurance thing as well as a simple test to weed out undesirable traits. It's generally well known that you'll be tested prior to hire (at least in the US). My view is accept that and either

a) stop/pass the test

b) find somewhere that doesn't care

I was confused by this part of the article. Are 23% of candidates being screened at the interview phase, or at the pre-job-offer phase? Drug screening isn't a cheap thing that you just do to everyone that walks in the door.

My company puts a common clause in the offer letter that says "this offer is contingent upon your successful completion of a drug screening, confirmation of your references, and the verification of your education and work history".

Lots of companies have services where their employees are contractors to other companies. Other companies can require the services co to screen all their contractors for drugs as a part of liability coverage.

For example - if you work for a company that provides contract services to healthcare / hospital / gov / dod companies or agencies - you will likely be required to take a drug screen. and this is done prior to your offer being officially accepted on their end.

I think it's mostly an insurance thing. Certain industries apparently can't get or can't afford insurance without requiring drug tests for everyone. Maybe more CYA policies at large companies.

I used to work for a company that would regularly send employees into refineries and chemical plants that we were consulting for. They required anyone who would go on-site to submit to drug tests, even though they weren't directly employed by the plant operator. So thanks to their requirement, most of our company had to be drug tested routinely.

I do wonder if any of these insurance companies have ever actually proven that drug tests make the plant safer. I suppose it makes more sense when you consider that it's an environment where a routine screw-up could easily cause catastrophic destruction. But do they know for sure, or are they just assuming or protecting themselves from lawsuits or something?

To avoid having to actually do some real human thinking. Fail a "drug" test, you can just treat those people as scum, not worth your time, disgusting pariahs. You don't have to look at them as human, and actually use your wits to decide.

People who, for example, smoke marijuana, will fail a drug test. Will they miss work because they're hungover from a Big Weekend? No, mostly not. Will some straight arrow call in sick because he or she got sick on Sunday evening? Yes. We know this. But to avoid having to cope with ambiguity or grey areas or hard decisions, we just let a "drug" test do it all.

Good, point.

It is also noteworthy, that drug-tests are not as precise as people might think. Most of them look for traces of metabolic byproducts of a substance, not the substance itself.

There are some (legal) medications, wich can indicate optium- and methamphetamine-addiction.

I am confused by your point. Would you rather sick people come into work and get even more people sick?

My point is that potheads probably don't call in "sick" from a weekend bender hangover, but we know alcoholics do. We test for marijuana use, we don't test for alcohol use. We know for a fact that even a teetotalling, cautious person calls in real sick every once in a while. So the reason for drug testing being "to avoid absences" is logically inconsistent.

Its incomplete; still useful if we assert that potheads will miss work.

Stipulated. But experience with co-workers tells me that drinkers miss more than potheads work, and can have catastrophic life collapses. "Drug" tests don't often test for alcohol consumption. So, I still think that "drug" tests aren't in place for that particular reason.

Arguable. I personally don't think any invasive test is warranted. Measure my performance; all else is irrelevant.

To cover the company's ass in case someone is injured on the job by an impaired person. Without drug testing, the injured party has a good case, saying management was asleep at the wheel. But with drug testing, management can say they did screen for drugs, no mutter how asleep they are.

Drug use is a seen as a moral failing. A morally weak person is seen as someone who will be a bad employee (steal, not put in a good day's work, cheat the clock, etc.).

Does it make sense? Often it makes none at all.

If I'm running a factory or warehouse and I need sober, alert workers that will not destroy merchandise with equipment and/or kill themselves or others around them, you can be damned sure I'm going to eliminate any risk of their personal time seeping into their work time.

Screening for recreational drug markers doesn't mean I'm judging their morals, but I'm zeroing out my risk factors.

Do you screen for cigarettes and alcohol use as well? Smoke breaks take up a lot of time, and someone with a hung over or slight buzz can be a safety issue.

What I've seen is that most companies don't care about those. They only care about illegal drugs. Even legal prescriptions that could have nasty effects are not judged harshly.

In short, there are more defensible reasons to drug test than what I listed, but they don't show up often in practice.

I think the idea is that if you can't manage to stay sober long enough to pass the test then you have some serious problems that will likely affect your work performance.