Pubdate: Wed, 11 Nov 1998
Date: 11/11/1998
Source: Times, The (UK)
Author: Stephen Young

Sir, Calling it a "huge success", Patrick Dixon tries his best to
paint a friendly face on mass drug testing, now an institution here in
America.

He offers little consideration, however, of employees who have done
nothing to provoke such a degrading procedure. And what of the fears
of employees hesitant to reveal medical conditions to employers? Drug
screenings can detect legal drugs, as well as illegal drugs. Innocent
employees can experience false positives, and drug-using employees may
know how to generate false negatives.

Perhaps there are fewer positive drug test results now, as Dixon
claims, but it would be ridiculous to assume that the process has had
any actual impact on the American drug problem. Drug testing has been
a success only as a business, profiting from a form of alchemy by
which, at last, urine can be turned into gold with little expense, as
long as an employee's dignity and privacy are overlooked as costs.

Yours faithfully,

Stephen Young,
Roselle, Illinois