I’ve been pretty busy as of late. You can probably tell by my infrequent posts. I’ve been building a new web for Oregon NORML (debuting Oct 1 Noon at www.ornorml.org) and working feverishly on the documents and planning involved in the 2005 Oregon Medical Cannabis Awards™. Plus there’s the real-world job, where I still am doing three jobs for one paycheck (working smarter, not harder, right?)

But here are some news nuggets about the latest marijuana-related stories in Oregon:

(Oregonian) More Fail Workplace Drug Test

Job applicants and workers already on the job are failing drug tests at a sharply higher rate this year, officials at Oregon’s largest drug-testing labs say.

Oregon Medical Laboratories in Eugene, the state’s largest clinical and workplace drug-testing laboratory, reports that its rate of positive employment-related tests jumped to 6.9 percent in the first six months of this year from 5.3 percent in the same period a year ago — a more than 30 percent increase.

The laboratory processes about 150,000 workplace-related drug tests a year, including hiring and random tests.

OK, get out your calculators, kids. If you test 150,000 employees and 5.3% of them came up positive last year, that’s 7,950 positives. At 6.9% that’s 10,350. So that’s 2,400 more people who’ve failed a drug test this year compared to last year.

Of course, this doesn’t take into account how many of those 150,000 use drugs, but abstain long enough to pass a test, or those who beat a test through masking agents or flushing their systems, or those who pass a test because of a false negative.

Also, let’s consider the cost. Administering a drug test costs about $50 to a company. At 150,000 tests, that’s about $7.5 million dollars spent by businesses to druyg test. At 10,350 positives, that ends up costing about $725 per positive. Is it worth it?

Now, does that mean that there is an increase in the number of Oregonians who are taking drugs? Or does it just mean the unemployed Oregonians who already take drugs are finally applying for jobs that have been created recently? Seems like the experts aren’t sure:

Lab directors and other workplace consultants say they can’t entirely explain the sudden jump in positive tests. But they speculate Oregon’s rapidly growing economy is luring formerly unemployed drug users into new jobs.

“It could be we’re seeing more people coming back into the labor force,” said Art Ayre, an employment economist with the Oregon Employment Department. If so, employers are likely “pulling in more of those people on the margins who have been engaging in this type of activity,” Ayre said.

Although Oregon’s unemployment rate — 6.7 percent in August — is still the second highest in the nation, the state’s job growth rate is also among the highest in the United States.

Yet another expert says that the increase is because employers are getting better at administering drug tests, such as requiring “same day” testing so prospective employees don’t have time to “get clean”.

Anyway, please go on…

While marijuana remains the most frequently detected drug, showing up in more than half of all positive tests, methamphetamine appears to be the fastest-growing illegal drug of choice among workers.

Of course it is. As faithful readers know, marijuana remains detectable in one’s system from 30 to 45 days, while meth and other hard drugs only remain detectable for 2 to 3 days. So failing a drug test for marijuana only proves that you smoked some in the past month or so — hardly what most people would call drug abuse — and does not in any way prove that the worker is impaired on the job. On the contrary, most marijuana smokers are gainfully employed and numerous studies show that as compared to the average, marijuana smokers are better educated, make more money, and have less absenteeism and workplace accidents.

So if we consider that, and factor in the idea that we actually want to ferret out the hard drug users, those who use substances that can cause serious addiction and health problems, those whose use must’ve been in the past two or three days, the meth, heroin, and cocaine users for whom you might make the argument for compromising workplace safety and productivity, those who will cost a company more in health care costs, well, then we’re looking at perhaps $1,500 per positive test.

And it really does seem like it’s the tweakers that employers are looking to catch:

Positive work-related test rates for meth in the first six months of this year ranged from 0.9 percent of all employment-related tests in Southern Oregon to 1.5 percent of all tests in the Portland area, Beardsley said.

Nationwide, positive rates for most major illicit drugs have been on the decline in recent years, thanks to effective drug-free workplace programs, experts say.

But amphetamines have been an exception. Five years ago, amphetamines showed up in one of every 400 workplace drug screens, Quest Diagnostics reported. Last year, they turned up in about one of every 200 tests, Quest said.

Another story in the Oregonian further illustrates the dread fear of the meth-monsters:

(Oregonian) Employers struggle with drug abuse

For as long as Hank Snow remembers, Roseburg Forest Products Co. has given workers caught using drugs a last-chance deal, keeping them employed as long as they agree to enter a rehabilitation program and stay clean.

“My focus has always been on prevention,” said Snow, vice president of human resources for the 3,500-employee company, which has health insurance that covers most treatment costs and pays workers $350 a week in disability during treatment. “As long as they’ve been here six months, they get an opportunity to go to rehab.”

The approach is increasingly being tested this year, though. The timber company has fired a record number of workers — 29 — who violated last-chance agreements by dropping out of rehab or failing to show up for follow-up drug tests.

Frustrated, Roseburg Forest Products is thinking about ending the last-chance agreements, Snow said, “and just terminating people to send a stronger message.”

Facing a surge in positive drug tests, companies and staffing agencies are struggling to react. They’re training managers to spot problems, working harder to recruit and seeking more information about test failures. Many companies find themselves choosing between helping to rehabilitate users in the hope they’ll become productive again or terminating them outright and swallowing turnover and retraining costs.

Mo’ money, mo’ money, mo’ money. Is all this drug testing really worth it? How much of this time and money is being wasted on rooting out marijuana smokers? And why is it an employer’s responsibility to monitor how an employee lives their life outside of the workplace?

I saw a comedian once who put it this way: “Drug testing is cheating. If I can come to work high, and you can’t tell, I win. Maybe smoking a joint is the only way some people can stomach the indignity of wearing a paper hat and asking ‘do you want to super size that?'” While that’s exaggeration for comic effect — hardly anyone who is a regular cannabis user gets stoned on the job — he does have a point. If drug use was the safety and productivity menace employers claim it to be, wouldn’t an alert manager be able to spot these workers? It’s not as if pot or meth use doesn’t have easily visible telltale signs.

Treatment providers say abusers usually need help getting off drugs, particularly meth. Employers often offer more resources than users’ families, either through employee-assistance programs or health insurance, which can help pay for rehabilitation.

“It is the very rare person — very rare — who gets involved with methamphetamine and stops by themselves,” said Jana Wolfgang, owner of Wolfgang Associates, a consultant to employers on drug-prevention programs.

Why, thank you, Jana! It’s not often that someone calls me “very rare”. Funny, though, how I personally know at least a dozen other “very rare” people. Don’t believe the hype, people. For every “faces of meth” tweaker’s photo you see in the Oregonian, there are many more who have used meth infrequently and managed their lives just fine, and even more who’ve “experimented” with the drug and quit.

But this brings up another interesting point about drug testing. Someone who uses drugs is often trying to self-medicate or look for a good time. Since marijuana is detectable for weeks and hard drugs are only detectable for days, employment drug testing for marijuana gives incentive to these people to trade the benign herb for the addictive narcotic, so they can be clean for the pee test.

And nowhere along this line of reasoning have we brought up the fact that alcohol is not tested for in drug tests and causes far more absenteeism, loss of productivity, accidents, and employee health costs than all illicit drugs combined. Nor do we test for tobacco use, which causes increases in employee health costs (heck, we even accept employees standing out in their own break area taking that drug during company time!)

But treatment providers say they sense most employers are becoming less patient with abusers, particularly those who abuse meth, for which successful treatment might take a year or more.

“I’m seeing consistently flat-out more terminations,” said Jerry Gjesvold, manager of employer services at Serenity Lane, a drug rehabilitation center based in Albany.

Workplace psychologists say the trend, if real, could leave taxpayers covering the social costs of unemployed, persistent users.

“The sad part with that is, that’s sometimes the best place to reach somebody is in the workplace,” said Donald Truxillo, an industrial psychology professor at Portland State University who studies workplace drug testing. “Once they’re gone, how does society get to them?”

Why, with that fabulous drug rehabilitation and job training program we call “homelessness”. Or even better, “prison”.