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The thing about manufacturing jobs is that they often involve operating heavy machinery. Drug use and intoxication drastically increases the chance of death or

The thing about manufacturing jobs is that they often involve operating heavy machinery. Drug use and intoxication drastically increases the chance of death or dismemberment - for the inebriated, or often, others around them. As a pilot, I seriously don’t care if you show up to work high or not - unless you’re doing maintenance on the jet I’m supposed to fly.

throwawayjava 9y ago
Fail drug test != show up to work high.
- killjoywashere 9y ago
  Past performance != future performance But it's the best signal we've got. Ignore it at your peril. Perhaps you are too young or live in too modern a world to understand how dangerous rare events are. Constructive paranoia has helped select evolutionary survivors for a very long time. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/29/science/jared-diamonds-guide-to-reducing-lifes-risks.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/29/science/jared-diamonds-gui...
  - throwawayjava 9y ago
    > But it's the best signal we've got Except that's not true. We can actually test for sobriety. And by doing drug testing instead, we're actually using a worse signal in place of a better signal! See e.g., http://www.predictivesafety.com/news/2017/2/6/the-advantages-of-impairment-testing-over-drug-testing-to-improve-workplace-safety http://www.predictivesafety.com/news/2017/2/6/the-advantages... > Perhaps you are too young or live in too modern a world to understand how dangerous rare events are. Constructive paranoia has helped select evolutionary survivors for a very long time. I'm not really sure if there's more than a vague analogy connecting Diamond's hypotheses to drug testing policy. And I don't find that exceptionally vague analogy to be compelling evidence. (And I'm one of those people who doesn't even buy a lot of Diamond's work anyways; in fact, I think I'm in good company on this one among the sober, grown-up anthropologists out there...) My weathered experience tells me to prefer hard data over vague analogies to pop science writers who are themselves known more for their well-written vague analogies than their well-researched hard science :-)
    - killjoywashere 9y ago
      If I have to test people for sobriety every day before a shift, I don't need to employ them.
      - throwawayjava 9y ago
        I'm not suggesting you do (although I know others on this thread are suggesting that). Administer sobriety tests the same way you currently administer drug tests -- upon application, and randomly. They're a lot cheaper so you can actually get more data for less $/time.
  - watwut 9y ago
    Drug test measure whether you smoked weed anytime last weeks, up to three months if I recall right. It has little to do with whether you are high first day on the job. It has more to do with drug war then with incidents.
    - SamReidHughes 9y ago
      If you can't pass a drug test it's a sign you can't get your shit together, abstain from weed, and pass a drug test.
      - Clubber 9y ago
        No it isn't. You've probably been seen and healed by a great doctor that smokes or has smoked weed recently. There is a good chance your financial advisor, lawyer and/or boss smokes or has smoked weed recently. Most professionals who do certainly don't boast about it with the witch hunting Puritan culture in the US, but there are a lot of them out there, and you've probably never noticed because it's not noticeable.
        SamReidHughes 9y ago
        Yes it is. If your great doctor had to pass a drug test, he would be perfectly capable of abstaining long enough to pass it.
        Clubber 9y ago
        So if there was a test that could tell if you've eaten chocolate in the last 30 days, then you required applicants to not eat chocolate ever, passing that would be an indicator of a good employee? Seems really arbitrary and pointless when you take out all the drug war baggage out of it.
        VLM 9y ago
        I think it odd that the strongest opposition to testing is from people who clearly don't smoke. Its a test of self introspection and awareness and intelligence, not solely discipline. Its not a simple binary "have you been within 10 meters of the devils weed in the past month T/F" question. To fail a test after 30 days of normal peeing takes something like weeks of Cheech and Chong 2.0 behavior to build up the level of metabolites in the body. There's a whole spectrum of use vs time required to test clean. A buzz a couple days ago will not fail a test. Wake and bake the morning of the test is a fail. The kind of person dumb enough to wake and bake the morning of a pee test is not the kind of person I'd want on a jobsite. There's also the question of motivation. There are supplements which basically make you pee alot to pee out the THC and there are test kits at walgreens for $10 that are fairly accurate to determine if you pass. To fail a pee test you have to be unmotivated enough to not even try. Responsible intelligent users will not have trouble passing a test. Irresponsible or unintelligent users are doomed, but those are the kind of people that cause workplace fatalities anyway, so no real loss. This is all aside from unemployment fraud type stuff.
- briffle 9y ago
  My grandpa took a part time job after retiring after 30 years at chevron/ortho. Failed his drug test. Turns out, they lost the sample, and in the testing companies mind, he couldn't be proven to pass, so he failed.
- BuckRogers 9y ago
  It doesn't really matter, who sits around using drugs? They don't do you any good and there's many other ways to get "high". Reading a book is the longest lasting. You can also play a videogame to release endorphins if that's what you're looking for.
logfromblammo 9y ago
Why not just give an automated field-sobriety test for alertness, judgment, and reflexes at the start of each shift? Pass the test, and you can clock in and get to work. Fail the test, hit the nap room (unpaid) for a while, and try again when you wake up. It would catch people who are drunk, high, having a stroke, or just sleepy, rather than just the guy who used cannabis two weekends ago and is perfectly capable of working now.
- zitterbewegung 9y ago
  Other than being extremely complicated to setup, has the ability for people to socially engineer themselves out of it and costing 1 hour of work per day per person yea you could do this .
- killjoywashere 9y ago
  > Why not just give an automated field-sobriety test Because they are famous for low specificity and low sensitivity.
  - solipsism 9y ago
    Low specificity and low sensitivity regarding whether drugs were ingested. This is not the same as measuring capability to work safely.
- dagw 9y ago
  Why not just give an automated field-sobriety test Does such a thing exist? Is there any independent evidence that it actually works?
- darpa_escapee 9y ago
  Field sobriety tests are like polygraph tests: highly subjective, easily influenced by bias and have little to no scientific backing.
  - vkou 9y ago
    Neither are drug tests for determining whether or not someone is high when they show up to work.
marnett 9y ago
Do they screen for alcoholism? If not, do you think they should? Do you want hungover forklift drivers?
tzs 9y ago
Drug tests don't test for intoxication. They just test test for something that correlates somewhat with having been intoxicated sometime in the recent past. Better is to use impairment testing. An impairment test is a test of cognitive function, alertness, reaction time, hand-eye coordination and similar objective things that actually correlate well with how well you can do your job now, instead of sometime in the past. On top of that, impairment testing can catch when you are impaired for reasons OTHER than intoxication. If your aircraft mechanic is not fit to do maintenance on your jet that morning because last night he found his wife sleeping with his best friend, they argued all night, and she announced that morning she is getting a divorce, leaving him a tired, emotional wreck who will make mistakes left and right at work...an impairment test can catch it. A drug test cannot. In addition, generally there is lag between drug testing and results. Impairment testing can be quick (a few minutes) and cheap so that you can do it to every employee, every day at the start of their shift.
- Clubber 9y ago
  >Drug tests don't test for intoxication. Exactly this. Pot is probably the most common and it stays in your system for 30 days after use (probably the longest that is tested). Essentially the screen will fail a guy who smoked pot two weeks ago, but pass a guy who shot up heroin all last week. Like the polygraph test, they are deeply flawed, in this case, for testing for intoxication. Also, imagine if drug tests failed an applicant for having a beer in the last 30 days. Like it or not, pot is replacing beer for a large portion of Americans, time to adapt.
- SilasX 9y ago
  That sounds like a much better idea; any reason this hasn't caught on as a replacement for drug testing? It opens up for a lot of good workers who'd otherwise be rejected, and it is more robust against the thing you actually care about preventing.
  - eru 9y ago
    Probably because drug tests are not actually about that?

throwawayjava 9y ago

Fail drug test != show up to work high.

killjoywashere 9y ago
Past performance != future performance But it's the best signal we've got. Ignore it at your peril. Perhaps you are too young or live in too modern a world to understand how dangerous rare events are. Constructive paranoia has helped select evolutionary survivors for a very long time. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/29/science/jared-diamonds-guide-to-reducing-lifes-risks.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/29/science/jared-diamonds-gui...
- throwawayjava 9y ago
  > But it's the best signal we've got Except that's not true. We can actually test for sobriety. And by doing drug testing instead, we're actually using a worse signal in place of a better signal! See e.g., http://www.predictivesafety.com/news/2017/2/6/the-advantages-of-impairment-testing-over-drug-testing-to-improve-workplace-safety http://www.predictivesafety.com/news/2017/2/6/the-advantages... > Perhaps you are too young or live in too modern a world to understand how dangerous rare events are. Constructive paranoia has helped select evolutionary survivors for a very long time. I'm not really sure if there's more than a vague analogy connecting Diamond's hypotheses to drug testing policy. And I don't find that exceptionally vague analogy to be compelling evidence. (And I'm one of those people who doesn't even buy a lot of Diamond's work anyways; in fact, I think I'm in good company on this one among the sober, grown-up anthropologists out there...) My weathered experience tells me to prefer hard data over vague analogies to pop science writers who are themselves known more for their well-written vague analogies than their well-researched hard science :-)
  - killjoywashere 9y ago
    If I have to test people for sobriety every day before a shift, I don't need to employ them.
    - throwawayjava 9y ago
      I'm not suggesting you do (although I know others on this thread are suggesting that). Administer sobriety tests the same way you currently administer drug tests -- upon application, and randomly. They're a lot cheaper so you can actually get more data for less $/time.
- watwut 9y ago
  Drug test measure whether you smoked weed anytime last weeks, up to three months if I recall right. It has little to do with whether you are high first day on the job. It has more to do with drug war then with incidents.
  - SamReidHughes 9y ago
    If you can't pass a drug test it's a sign you can't get your shit together, abstain from weed, and pass a drug test.
    - Clubber 9y ago
      No it isn't. You've probably been seen and healed by a great doctor that smokes or has smoked weed recently. There is a good chance your financial advisor, lawyer and/or boss smokes or has smoked weed recently. Most professionals who do certainly don't boast about it with the witch hunting Puritan culture in the US, but there are a lot of them out there, and you've probably never noticed because it's not noticeable.
      - SamReidHughes 9y ago
        Yes it is. If your great doctor had to pass a drug test, he would be perfectly capable of abstaining long enough to pass it.
        Clubber 9y ago
        So if there was a test that could tell if you've eaten chocolate in the last 30 days, then you required applicants to not eat chocolate ever, passing that would be an indicator of a good employee? Seems really arbitrary and pointless when you take out all the drug war baggage out of it.
        VLM 9y ago
        I think it odd that the strongest opposition to testing is from people who clearly don't smoke. Its a test of self introspection and awareness and intelligence, not solely discipline. Its not a simple binary "have you been within 10 meters of the devils weed in the past month T/F" question. To fail a test after 30 days of normal peeing takes something like weeks of Cheech and Chong 2.0 behavior to build up the level of metabolites in the body. There's a whole spectrum of use vs time required to test clean. A buzz a couple days ago will not fail a test. Wake and bake the morning of the test is a fail. The kind of person dumb enough to wake and bake the morning of a pee test is not the kind of person I'd want on a jobsite. There's also the question of motivation. There are supplements which basically make you pee alot to pee out the THC and there are test kits at walgreens for $10 that are fairly accurate to determine if you pass. To fail a pee test you have to be unmotivated enough to not even try. Responsible intelligent users will not have trouble passing a test. Irresponsible or unintelligent users are doomed, but those are the kind of people that cause workplace fatalities anyway, so no real loss. This is all aside from unemployment fraud type stuff.
briffle 9y ago
My grandpa took a part time job after retiring after 30 years at chevron/ortho. Failed his drug test. Turns out, they lost the sample, and in the testing companies mind, he couldn't be proven to pass, so he failed.
BuckRogers 9y ago
It doesn't really matter, who sits around using drugs? They don't do you any good and there's many other ways to get "high". Reading a book is the longest lasting. You can also play a videogame to release endorphins if that's what you're looking for.

logfromblammo 9y ago

Why not just give an automated field-sobriety test for alertness, judgment, and reflexes at the start of each shift? Pass the test, and you can clock in and get to work. Fail the test, hit the nap room (unpaid) for a while, and try again when you wake up. It would catch people who are drunk, high, having a stroke, or just sleepy, rather than just the guy who used cannabis two weekends ago and is perfectly capable of working now.

zitterbewegung 9y ago
Other than being extremely complicated to setup, has the ability for people to socially engineer themselves out of it and costing 1 hour of work per day per person yea you could do this .
killjoywashere 9y ago
> Why not just give an automated field-sobriety test Because they are famous for low specificity and low sensitivity.
- solipsism 9y ago
  Low specificity and low sensitivity regarding whether drugs were ingested. This is not the same as measuring capability to work safely.
dagw 9y ago
Why not just give an automated field-sobriety test Does such a thing exist? Is there any independent evidence that it actually works?
darpa_escapee 9y ago
Field sobriety tests are like polygraph tests: highly subjective, easily influenced by bias and have little to no scientific backing.
- vkou 9y ago
  Neither are drug tests for determining whether or not someone is high when they show up to work.

marnett 9y ago

Do they screen for alcoholism? If not, do you think they should? Do you want hungover forklift drivers?

tzs 9y ago

Drug tests don't test for intoxication. They just test test for something that correlates somewhat with having been intoxicated sometime in the recent past. Better is to use impairment testing. An impairment test is a test of cognitive function, alertness, reaction time, hand-eye coordination and similar objective things that actually correlate well with how well you can do your job now, instead of sometime in the past. On top of that, impairment testing can catch when you are impaired for reasons OTHER than intoxication. If your aircraft mechanic is not fit to do maintenance on your jet that morning because last night he found his wife sleeping with his best friend, they argued all night, and she announced that morning she is getting a divorce, leaving him a tired, emotional wreck who will make mistakes left and right at work...an impairment test can catch it. A drug test cannot. In addition, generally there is lag between drug testing and results. Impairment testing can be quick (a few minutes) and cheap so that you can do it to every employee, every day at the start of their shift.

Clubber 9y ago
>Drug tests don't test for intoxication. Exactly this. Pot is probably the most common and it stays in your system for 30 days after use (probably the longest that is tested). Essentially the screen will fail a guy who smoked pot two weeks ago, but pass a guy who shot up heroin all last week. Like the polygraph test, they are deeply flawed, in this case, for testing for intoxication. Also, imagine if drug tests failed an applicant for having a beer in the last 30 days. Like it or not, pot is replacing beer for a large portion of Americans, time to adapt.
SilasX 9y ago
That sounds like a much better idea; any reason this hasn't caught on as a replacement for drug testing? It opens up for a lot of good workers who'd otherwise be rejected, and it is more robust against the thing you actually care about preventing.
- eru 9y ago
  Probably because drug tests are not actually about that?