A few thoughts. Drug testing is a great way for an employer to get rid of someone when they have no cause to fire them. For example, a friend of mine had a jo

A few thoughts. Drug testing is a great way for an employer to get rid of someone when they have no cause to fire them. For example, a friend of mine had a job throwing luggage at the airport. They had a policy that allowed them to arbitrarily drug test people, but they never did, so my friend figured smoking a little weed now and then would be OK. Then one day, he hurts his back. He goes in to fill out the forms for workman's comp, and guess what the first thing they ask him to do is? You can't fire someone for getting hurt, but you can for flunking a drug test! Drug testing is not an effective way to determine whether someone is using drugs. I live in a self-run sober living house, specifically an Oxford House. We do random drug tests now and then, but it's really just to deter "I bet I can get away with..." thinking, and we rarely catch anyone using like that. The reason we never catch people with randoms is twofold - drug tests are stupid easy to beat (and most addicts know how), and we catch people relapsing because when addicts relapse, it's really an all or nothing thing. People will think they can smoke a joint at a concert (because their problem is booze, not weed!), but invariably they come staggering in drunk out of their mind within a week. I believe employer drug testing is harmful and invasive[1]. What employees do on their own time is their business. If someone has a problem with drugs or alcohol that effects their work, that will become obvious and HR can either fire them or, and this is what's been done with me in the past, force them to go to treatment. This means that even though I get drug tested regularly where I live, I will straight up refuse to work for a company that drug tests any of it's employees (again [1]). [1] There are some jobs where a person being intoxicated on the job would put lives or property at risk. In this case, drug and alcohol testing seems acceptable. Of course, with alcohol testing, one wonders why employers don't use the readily available UA's and mouth swabs to test for alcohol use in the past few days...social acceptability is a big deal.