Consider treatment for new workers hooked on drugs
THE ISSUE
The number of employees and job applicants in Hawaii testing positive has increased.
|
FRUSTRATED in Hawaii's tight job market about rejecting prospective employees who flunk drug tests, some employers have abandoned the tests. While such a step is understandable, alternative measures aimed at requiring drug treatment as a condition of employment would be preferable.
Hawaii's unemployment rate of less than 3 percent amounts to a worker shortage. However, nearly 6 percent of the people who took pre-employment or random workplace drug screenings in the last three months of 2005 tested positive for drug use, according to Diagnostic Laboratory Services, which conducted the tests.
More troubling is that test results show that use of marijuana, cocaine and crystal methamphetamine all are on the rise, although slightly. Marijuana is the favorite drug, with 2.6 percent of applicants or workers testing positive, while crystal meth is used by 2 percent.
"Some companies have terminated drug testing," Carl Linden, the testing company's scientific director, told the Star-Bulletin's Nelson Daranciang.
Others, while rejecting job applicants testing positive, have decided to reconsider the applicant with another test after six months.
The test results do not reflect the actual number of illicit drug users on the job. Nationally, three of every four users are employed either full time or part time, according to a 2002 survey by U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. In Hawaii during the same year, 20 percent of those provided treatment for alcohol or drug abuse were employed.
Although those figures show that some illicit drug users can be productive, a state legislative task force found in 2003 that employers' response to illicit drugs in the workplace "appears to be primarily punitive and zero tolerance." However, some companies have a "two strikes" policy allowing an employee testing positive to stay on the job while seeking treatment through an employee assistance program.
Labor unions regard that policy as too harsh because of the tendency, especially among "ice" users, to relapse. One union told the task force that no ice user had ever successfully completed treatment under the two-strikes policy.
The task force found one company that, in partnership with a community treatment program, had a program in which it hired people in treatment and recovery. The company even backed away from firing a person under relapse, appreciating that relapse can be part of the recovery process.
Hawaii's worker shortage should cause other companies to consider such a program. Compassion and treatment are especially important for both employers and prospective employees because of the state's worker shortage.
As the task force found, "A growing unemployed population who are victims of the ice epidemic does not serve the public interest."