Most employees today put extreme importance on drug testing considering the vitality of the roles the employees play in the achievement of organizational goals and objectives. Employees are the central focus of any organization. They are considered to be the primary asset of any company.
The company’s functions and accomplishments are due to the efficiency and effectiveness of its employees. The employees play a major role in the functioning of the organization, thus companies today put due reliance on providing a safe and productive work environment to their employees. The employees are considered to be lifelines of any organization, thereby their satisfaction is the utmost priority of the employer. The testing of drugs is a step towards this goal of the employers.
The National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence conducted a survey which discovered the fact that approximately 15 million Americans use drugs and around 70-75% of them are employees. This simply counts as about 10 to 11 million employees are using drugs in the form of weed, marijuana, cocaine, or other prescribed drugs. This number is undoubtedly a huge one for something like drug or weed users.
What are the main causes for drug abuse by employees in such large numbers?
The reasons are both personal and professional like peer pressure, work pressure, work overload, lack of motivation, stress anxiety, or lack of self-help. Most employees suffer time scarcity in their lives due to hectic schedules and hostile or jammed work environments. They are not able to keep an equilibrium or balance in their work-life and personal life. All these factors lead to ultimate depression which then gets cured by the use of drugs in their routine life.
Why do employers perform drug testing on their employees?
The primary concern of employers is to support and provide safety to the employees and reduce workers’ costs claims. There are many other reasons for conducting drug or weed tests on employees as given below:
- Shrunken productivity: Employees who are drug users slowly prove to be a liability than assets as they are not able to perform to their potential.
- Decreased employees’ morale: Use of drugs, weeds or other such stuff makes them loosen their thinking capacity and they get into more darkness leading to low morale.
- Decreased profitability: Another issue is decreased profitability due to underperforming employees.
- Deterioration of companies’ ethical and professional reputation: Employees are representatives of the companies wherever they go out or work, their behaviour or actions ultimately affects the reputation of employers all along.
But more often most employees successfully pass the drug testing even if they are drug abusers. The main question here arises is – how do employees or people pass drug or weed testing?
Following are the most common ways to pass a drug test even when you are a user:
- The first strategy used by drug users is to dilute the urine sample. This is mostly done by drinking a lot of water before getting the test done on your body. More water would dilute the drug content in the urine sample.
- Another way of avoiding getting caught for drug abuse is by changing the urine sample with someone who is not an abuser.
- Many others use various chemicals to conceal the drug content in their sample.
- Most abusers avoid drug testing by delaying the test so that the drug content in their body dilutes itself naturally.
- Other methods are using detoxifying drinks or medications to filter up the body.
In very simple terminology, most employees who go through drug or weed tests can always pass the test without getting caught by using various methods as mentioned above. However, employers too are smart, sometimes smart enough to outsmart the employees by using the best drug testing or even chemical detection methods.
