Let's Pretend All Drug Use Is Abuse!
Actually, it's not. But we do pretend it is, by disqualifying people for jobs based on pot use -- when there are only urine tests to detect marijuana and other illegal drugs, and none for martinis.
Well, here's Matt Welch, most recently of Reason magazine, newly hired as assistant editorial page editor of the LA Times, on the humiliation of being made to pee into a cup to start his new job. Yes, Matt Welch, who, like me, reacts to pot the way most people react to being clonked over the head with a cast-iron frying pan:
THE NEWSPAPER you are reading has been lovingly compiled by hundreds of humans who urinated into plastic measuring cups for the privilege of bringing it to you.I gather this is not widely known among readers, judging by the reaction from those I've told. "Why would the L.A. Times care whether you've smoked pot?" goes the typical response. It doesn't help with the comprehension that it's not immediately evident that anyone here actually does.
Yet it's been company policy for at least 18 years that every new hire excrete on command while a rubber-gloved nurse waits outside with her ear plastered to the door. Those who test positive for illegal drugs don't get their promised job, on grounds that someone who can't stay off the stuff long enough to pass a one-time, advance-notice screening might have a problem. (And yes, it has happened in the newsroom a handful of times.) This despite the fact that we generally don't operate machinery heavier than a coffee pot, aren't likely to sell our secrets to blackmailing Russkies and are supposed to be at least theoretically representative of typical Americans.
Because guess what? The typical American — and just about every journalist I've ever asked — has already tried marijuana at least once before the age of 25, according to the government's National Survey on Drug Use and Health. What's more, despite 35 years and billions of dollars' worth of taxpayer-financed propaganda to the contrary, most of those who've inhaled didn't collapse through the "gateway" into desperate heroin addiction or "Traffic"-style sex slavery. George W. Bush turned out all right (at least on paper), as did Al Gore, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bill Walton, Michael Bloomberg and millions more.
More on the urine-testing issue from Reason's Jacob Sullum:
To magnify the size of the problem facing employers, the government and the drug testing industry routinely conflate illegal drugs with alcohol. But it’s clear that employers are not expected to treat drinkers the way they treat illegal drug users. Although drinking is generally not allowed on company time, few employers do random tests to enforce that policy. In 1995, according to survey data collected by Tyler Hartwell and his colleagues, less than 14 percent of work sites randomly tested employees for alcohol. And while 22 percent tested applicants for alcohol, such tests do not indicate whether someone had a drink, say, the night before. In any case, it’s a rare employer who refuses to hire drinkers.When it comes to illegal drugs, by contrast, the rule is zero tolerance: Any use, light or heavy, on duty or off, renders an applicant or worker unfit for employment. "With alcohol, the question has always been not ‘Do you consume?’ but ‘How much?’" notes Ted Shults, chairman of the American Association of Medical Review Officers, which trains and certifies physicians who specialize in drug testing. "With the illegal drugs, it’s always, ‘Did you use it?’"
The double standard is especially striking because irresponsible drinking is by far the biggest drug problem affecting the workplace. "Alcohol is the most widely abused drug among working adults," the U.S. Department of Labor notes. It cites an estimate from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration that alcohol accounts for 86 percent of the costs imposed on businesses by drug abuse.
In part, the inconsistency reflects the belief that illegal drug users are more likely than drinkers to become addicted and to be intoxicated on the job. There is no evidence to support either assumption. The vast majority of pot smokers, like the vast majority of drinkers, are occasional or moderate users. About 12 percent of the people who use marijuana in a given year, and about 3 percent of those who have ever tried it, report smoking it on 300 or more days in the previous year. A 1994 study based on data from the National Comorbidity Survey estimated that 9 percent of marijuana users have ever met the American Psychiatric Association’s criteria for "substance dependence." The comparable figure for alcohol was 15 percent.
According to the testing industry, however, any use of an illegal drug inevitably leads to abuse. "Can employees who use drugs be good workers?" Roche asks in one of its promotional documents. Its answer: "Perhaps, for awhile. Then, with extended use and abuse of drugs and alcohol, their performance begins to deteriorate. They lose their edge. They’re late for work more often or they miss work all together....Suddenly, one person’s drug problem becomes everyone’s problem." This equation of use with abuse is a staple of prohibitionist propaganda. "It is simply not true," says the Drug-Free America Foundation, "that a drug user or alcohol abuser leaves his habit at the factory gate or the office door." The message is that a weekend pot smoker should be as big a worry as an employee who comes to work drunk every day.
Employers respond to the distinctions drawn by the government. Under the Americans With Disabilities Act, for example, alcoholics cannot be penalized or fired without evidence that their drinking is hurting their job performance. With illegal drugs, however, any evidence of use is sufficient grounds for disciplinary action or dismissal.
The question is: How many lives get ruined for a bit of pot possession? How many people are in jail or have criminal records because they toke instead of suck down vodka and tonics? How come the government is allowed tell you what you can and can't put in your body, and where you can and can't go in your own head? If you aren't driving drunk, or operating a lathe, what's the problem?
In fact, I know a brilliant scientist who is something of a pothead. She works from about 8am to 8pm, and comes home and smokes a big doobie to wind down. Ooh, another life ruined by drugs -- well, if you'd call "ruin" coming up with a breathtaking scientific discovery that's saved thousands of lives...just for starters.
Of course, it's futile to expect the dumbass criminalization of pot to change, in light of the caliber of officials we elect to represent us -- the caliber that sticks a finger in the wind and feels which way the votes are blowing...which is generally on the side of can't go wrong with "Just Say No!" to intelligent drug policy.
Amen.
The only thing I care for less than pot is its demonization.
little Ted at January 31, 2006 1:01 AM
It was neat how reason titled the piece: "L.A. Times Takes the Piss Out of Matt Welch."
Crid at January 31, 2006 2:53 AM
Infuriatingly related to this - there is a huge bloody gap in the current crop of trendy anti-drug TV commercials. The ones which acknowledge the possibility that your mom or dad might indeed have once sampled pot - but you, dear teenager, shouldn't rule out listening to them anyway. (Presumably when they're not knocking back a martini!).
The concept only appears to be more up-to-date than "reefer madness", because I'm damned if I know what mom and dad are meant to say next!
Jody Tresidder at January 31, 2006 6:01 AM
Hey - does this mean you think it's cool for us to do drugs at my radioactive waste plant?
This seems so juvenile. Why anyone would opt for more leniency, while citing the legality of one of the scourges of modern life, alcohol, is beyond me. If you want to drug yourself silly with anything at any time, I don't want to keep your company at work.
Radwaste at January 31, 2006 5:46 PM
Radwaste,
You, like so many others, have sucessfully missed the point (and given that the point is roughly the size of a small planet, that's quite an accomplishment).
Virtually every bit of meaningful data on the subject shows that the VAST MAJORITY of those who use pot (and even alcohol) do not use it irresponsibly (if you assume any use at all is irresponsible, then I'm sorry, but you're just an idiot, no different than any other zero tolerance idiot).
If I'm working in a venue where mental and physical acuity is a necessary part of the job, if someone is impaired for any reason (drugs, alcohol, some prescription meds, lack of sleep, etc.), then they shouldn't be there at all. If they relaxed with a joint the night before, and come in fully capable of doing the job (and believe it or not, that IS usually the case where responsible use is concerned), then I couldn't care less what they do away from work.
The metric should be their performance ON THE JOB, not on what they do on their time off.
Drugging yourself silly at any time is NOT responsible usage. Occasional usage when appropriate IS responsible usage.
Dale at January 31, 2006 6:08 PM
you wouldn't believe what the government spends on the war on drugs. i don't have any facts or figures, but it's substantial (and i'm sure there's a lot of black money involved as well), and there's a good possibility i'll be finding out firsthand this summer.
from a principles standpoint, i should be able to do anything i want to my body so long as i don't interfere with anyone else's life. the right to swing my fist stops where the other person's face begins.
from a practical standpoint, it would be much easier (and profitable) for the government to make it legal and regulate it (and tax the hell out of it) than spending oodles of money keeping it away from us.
and i'm not some hippie either. i've never even TRIED pot... unless you count the womb (SORRY MOM!)
g*mart at January 31, 2006 7:57 PM
The drug testing thing is interesting (and irritating) because it smacks of the nanny state, which is typically the bane of conservative political thought. (I believe it was Reagan who really ushered it in by instituting drug testing in the military.) The argument against the nanny state is founded (rightly) on the idea that you should punish the actions you dislike rather than actions that could *potentially lead* to actions you don't like. This avoids the slipperiest of slopes.
So you let people do whatever they want until they break the law or violate someone's rights. Then, you throw the book at them. But drug testing assumes that the very act of doing drugs is a virtual guarantee that laws will be broken or rights will be violated. So they head off these offenses at the pass.
Ironically, this is exactly the same rationale for hate crimes laws. If you hate, you're just a criminal waiting for a crime. Conservatives seem to be generally against these laws. It would appear that there's an intellectual inconsistency here. Imagine that!
The bottom line when it comes to pot is that, in the hands of responsible people, it provides access to normally unavailable areas of the brain. The creative benefits of that are obvious if you just peruse the aisles of any music store or art gallery. The losers who smoke their lives away would have found something else to rob them of their productivity anyway. It's not the drug - it's the person.
Chris Wilson at January 31, 2006 10:19 PM
"Drugging yourself silly at any time is NOT responsible usage. Occasional usage when appropriate IS responsible usage."
Exactly. I don't drink wine while I'm writing my column. (No, I drink coffee and take Ritalin!) The right drugs for the right occasions.
Rad, because the government has banned a drug doesn't mean they're smart or right, or not violating our rights for doing so. Look at Prohibition. And look at "Blue Laws" -- which violate the separation of church and state, but still exist.
Again, I point to my friend, the scientist. In terms of her major contribution to society (and it's a pity I can't reveal what that is, thanks to the draconian punishments for her method of unwinding)...and her continued important contributions...does it really matter whether she unwinds with a beer after work or a toke?
Amy Alkon at February 1, 2006 12:06 AM
>So you let people do whatever they want until they break the law or violate someone's rights. Then, you throw the book at them
>Rad, because the government has banned a drug doesn't mean they're smart or right, or not violating our rights for doing so
Agreed on both counts.
Smokes weed while watching Jeopardy after work? Irrelevant. Smokes weed in the bathroom at work? Fire his ass.
High on a couch? Fine. High in a car wreck? Fucked.
This is one of those issues that I have to think will go away as the Baby Boomers do. There's still a lot of left-over resentment towards hippies in that demographic, clouding their judgment (even from the ex-hippies). Unfortunately, that's a long time for those potheads and us civil liberties people to wait.
little Ted at February 1, 2006 12:22 AM
Chris Wilson says "I believe it was Reagan who really ushered it in by instituting drug testing in the military."
Nope, I had to piss in a bottle in the Air Force under Nixon. Nixon started the "war on drugs" (and was the first to use the phrase). Reagan just copied him.
Ironic, seeing how Reagan had Alzheimer's.
steve at February 1, 2006 9:19 AM
My bad. I was still shitting in diapers when Nixon was bugging hotels.
I could swear I read somewhere that Reagan had something big to do with drug testing becoming pervasive. Of course, I could have been high when I read it.
Chris Wilson at February 2, 2006 11:00 AM
The tests got cheap enough in the eighties that private businesses could waste money on them. I say "waste money" because they don't measure intoxication, only USE.
Reagan surely encouraged them.
The bottle I peed in was for a heroin test; I was in SE Asia, home of the world's best drugs, and there was then no test for marijuana.
At the time, most folks thought legalization was only a metter of years away, but who could have forseen Reagan? Or Carter, for that matter...
steve at February 3, 2006 12:48 PM
Well, I see that someone doesn't understand cause-and-effect at all.
I have the sort of job where, if you show up a little impaired, it might not matter, and then it might. We set safety records right and left. Washington Savannah River Company makes every other job site look like A Nightmare on Elm Street, and it's that way because of layered defenses against screwups.
If you imply that permissiveness means that responsible people won't be screwed by the guy who shows up just once impaired, you just don't know much about industrial environments. One error - sometimes, just a failure to observe one of many precautions - changes a "near miss" into equipment damage or a personal injury. Do you want to be the victim? Do you understand that once the mistake is made, it can't be called back or appealed?
Blanket prohibition is in place because on-entry testing can't be done. Usage testing is done because there is no way to measure intoxication - and job tasks tax people differently.
The list of people you absolutely, positively never want to show up for work impaired is pretty long.
Let's see: Smokers kill themselves, fill hospitals with cancer cases and set fire to things willy-nilly as they litter the streets and woods with butts. Drinkers fill morgues and mental wards with traffic and domestic violence victims. These are both excuses to use other drugs?
Radwaste at February 3, 2006 2:16 PM
Rad,
Not only are you still missing the point, it snuck up on you, hit you in the back of the head, and ran off again, and you still didn't notice.
Cause and effect isn't limited to recreational drug use, you know. How do you check for someone who comes to work tired (and equally, if not more, likely to cause a fault), or on medication? What if they're preoccupied by a family problem? You might be able to notice some of these cases, but you won't catch them all, and every single one of those cases (among MANY others) is just as dangerous (if not more so) than coming to work the day after having a relaxing joint in the evening.
All that said, I don't really have a problem with a prohibition of sorts when it comes to certain jobs, but if your prohibition doesn't include EVERY form of behaviour that can conceivably cause a problem, then you're not really all that far from being a hypocrite. To claim problems with a few things while ignoring the equally great problems caused by other things doesn't make a strong case for your position.
The list of people you absolutely, positively never want to show up for work impaired is pretty long
Apart from your personal bias, you haven't demonstrated that a casual user (pot smoker, let's say) who partakes responsibly, say in the evening, is actually impaired the next day.
For even the most exacting tasks, I'd much rather have someone who smokes a joint in the evening, gets a good nights sleep, and comes in refreshed and alert to a teetotaler who comes in with two hours of sleep, after arguing with their spouse, and whose mind is not on the job. And yes, I'm aware these aren't the only options in the spectrum, but the way you talk, you would seem to prefer the latter case.
Smokers kill themselves, fill hospitals with cancer cases and set fire to things willy-nilly as they litter the streets and woods with butts. Drinkers fill morgues and mental wards with traffic and domestic violence victims. These are both excuses to use other drugs?
Smokers kill themselves, that's their choice. Smokers fill hospitals with cancer cases, so do people who work around nuclear waste, and so do people who don't do anything 'dangerous' at all. I'm not overly sanguine about the way some of the costs involved are covered, but that's largely a red herring. Stupid smokers litter the streets, etc., these people are the direct antithesis of responsible. They're morons, regardless of what else they might do. Same for your irresponsible drinkers.
You conflate any use with irresponsible use. That's a logical fallacy, no more accurate than if I were to say that there's no safe way to handle nuclear waste, regardless of how careful you are. Or, using your logic, I could say that because there are waste handlers out there who engage in unsafe and criminal methods of waste handling, then you must also engage in those methods as well.
It is the defining characteristic of the nanny state that the responsible are tarred with the same brush as the irresponsible, and it does no real service to either. By refusing to accept the fact that responsible use exists, it becomes impossible to identify and act upon truly irresponsible use.
Treating someone who drinks a martini in the evening the same as a drunkard who beats his wife is idiotic and irresponsible in and of itself.
Dale at February 3, 2006 7:35 PM
Dale, maybe this will be simple enough.
Not only do two wrongs not make a right, but a person who will not obey the law is certainly not likely to observe a regulation in a procedure, the following of which is derived from other laws. We have abundant, non-anecdotal evidence of this. Any use IS irresponsible use when the law is clear on such issues.
By the way, we DO have "fitness for duty" standards which we pursue. Evidently I needed to explain "layered defenses" more. We dismiss people from duties when impaired in any way; this is evaluated at pre-job briefs everyone must attend.
By the way, you hit it right on the head: there IS no safe way to handle nuclear waste. What we do is prosecute the possibility of release as far as we can. Safety is an illusion - it does not occur in nature - which serves as a target, a goal. I am not claiming perfection here. I can show why permissiveness with respect to the law and other regulations is VERY bad for people and the environment at many jobs.
If you want to drug yourself silly, you just can't work where I do, or in a bunch of other jobs where you must demonstrate compliance with the rules to stay within safety limits for the process. This has nothing to do with the hypocrisy of laws and everything to do with human performance. In such cases, those who continually point out "shades of gray" must recognize that black and white do, in fact, exist.
Radwaste at February 4, 2006 10:04 AM
You're making the unwarranted assumption that there is a *rational* basis for the law against recreational drug use. There is not, as an analysis of the history of those law will make abundantly clear. The cornerstones of every recreational drug law is anti-competitive lobbying and racism. If actual impairment were part of the equation, it would include laws against lack of sleep and holders of political office.
I can choose (correctly) to disobey an irrational and / or meaningless law, and still have utmost respect for a regulation or standard that is in place to protect my safety and that of others. Contrary to your tunnel vision approach to life, it is possible. One action does not imply the other, they are in orthogonal domains.
You give acceptance to the (false logical) viewpoint that the member of any set is the member of all sets. The set of members of responsible imbibers is not, in fact, also a member of the set of irresponsible imbibers, the intersection of those sets is a null set.
I guarantee you that your 'layered defenses' are not, in fact, infallible. And that has *NOTHING* to do with whether or not the person you're evaluating behaved in some arbitrary fashion or not. As for your pre-job checks, do you engage in these checks prior to each and every action taken by each and every individual?
Your conflation of irresponsible versus responsible is at the core of your misunderstanding. By your own logic, since it is an established fact that there exist handlers of nuclear waste who handle that waste irresponsibly, then it follows that you, yourself, must also handle nuclear waste irresponsibly, since in your mind there is no difference between responsible and irresponsible actions.
Dale at February 4, 2006 8:33 PM
As an additional point, on a practical level, it sounds like your pre job checks determine an acceptable level of fitness and awareness prior to task assignment. That meshes quite nicely with my assertion that job performance is the proper metric, and not some 'preferred' lifestyle.
If someone passes your pre job check, does it really matter what they did the night before? And if they don't pass, does it matter that they were Mother Teresa?
I'm not an apologist for stupid people. If someone comes to work drunk, or stoned, or in whatever state of impairment that prevents them from doing their job safely and correctly, I'm entirely cool with having them tossed out on their asses.
Contrary to what some would have us believe, there is no such thing as a one size fits all pattern of behaviour. If I hire someone to do a job, what I care about is their ability to do that job, I have *zero* interest in what they do on their time off, unless and until it engenders a direct effect on their job performance. At which point, they're history (or at least on some sort of probation), regardless of what caused the effect on their job performance.
The law is *not* the arbiter of ethical behaviour. It is entirely possible to disobey certain laws and still be responsible, ethical, and right.
The primary argument presented in the parent article has to do with the costs incurred in complying with laws that have little or no rational basis. The war on drugs is *FAR* more costly than what it is intended to fight. It engenders corruption and violence, and does far greater harm than the drugs themselves *EVER* did.
Dale at February 4, 2006 9:12 PM
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