Drugs in the Workplace

With the significant prevalence of drugs in the wider community, it is illogical to assume that drug abuse stops at the company gate. Most organisations are affected by substance abuse in one way or another and management have a duty to shareholders and employees to consider the cost to the business of that drug abuse. Cost not only from absenteeism and poor performance but also company image and most importantly, employee and customer safety.

A drug abuser is less productive but more critically, four times as likely to be involved in a work related insurance claim. Half of all under 25 year olds have experimented with drugs and 1 in 5 of these will continue to use drugs. Three quarters of theft related crime is to feed drug habits. Two of the 10 daily road traffic fatalities have consumed illegal drugs. Many more drug users are involved in the 1,000 serious and minor injury road accidents each day and a third of all road accidents are whilst on company business.

Drugs can affect someone for a significant time after the apparent effects have worn off. Numerous studies show that Cannabis has an obvious impairing effect for a number of hours, but also continues to cause impairment for up to five days. This impairment is only apparent when the person is suddenly placed in a critical situation requiring immediate judgement decisions, and at this point their mind and body cannot react with the same speed or skill as when they had not consumed the drug. This is a classic situation for some one to experience in the seconds of trying to avoid a road traffic accident. More worrying is the fact that three quarters of the Cannabis seized in the UK is five times stronger than the cannabis used in the studies.

Question One. Does your company want to detect the people who have taken the drug in the hour or so before coming to work, or do you want to detect those who took the drug last night, or over the weekend?

They could still be impaired and are likely to be impaired at work on other occasions, so you need to look back days not hours.

Legal requirements and obligations