The justifications for drug testing are part of the presently fashionable
debate concerning restoring America's "competitiveness." Drugs, it has been
revealed, are responsible for rampant absenteeism, reduced output, and poor
quality work. But is drug testing in fact rationally related to the
resurrection of competitiveness? Will charging the atmosphere of the
workplace with the fear of excretory betrayal honestly spur productivity?
Much noise has been made about rehabilitating the worker using drugs, but
to date the vast majority of programs end with the simple firing or the not
hiring of the abuser. This practice may exacerbate, not alleviate, the
nation's productivity problem. If economic rehabilitation is the ultimate
goal of drug testing, then criteria abandoning the rehabilitation of the
drug-using worker is the purest of hypocrisy and the worst of rationalization.
-- The concluding paragraph of "Constitutional Law: The
Fourth Amendment and Drug Testing in the Workplace,"
Tim Moore, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, vol.
10, No. 3 (Summer 1987), pp. 762-768.
