In today’s modern society, businesses need to do everything that they can to ensure that they have a stable and productive workforce. One of the most common methods for producing a stable, productive workforce in recent years has been drug testing/screening. Many believe that drug testing is a valid and useful tool available to businesses to promote a workplace culture the business prefers. Others feel that drug testing is a violation of privacy and has no place at a business. Almost everyone knows of someone that has abused drugs before, during, or after work. Not many know of how drug abuse actually affects performance and safety on the job. Determining if there is a correlation between drugs and poor performance and safety will help to validate drug testing’s presence. Ever since the technology was available, drug testing at the workplace has existed in some form or another. When Reagan became President in 1986, he began to push drug testing in the workplace, schools, and those applying for free benefits as part of the escalating war on drugs. (Butler, 2007) Since then, drug testing has proliferated to the rest of society and become almost a norm. For some businesses, it has become a major hiring tool, while for others it does not exist. For those that do use drug testing, it comes on many forms. Tests range from urine based to hair based to “Drug Recognition Experts,” (Butler, 2007) and each test has its own strengths and weaknesses.
The easiest and cheapest tests to perform are urine tests. The most basic and easiest to perform is called an EMIT test. EMIT stands for enzyme multiplied immunoassay technique and involves a urine sample from the subject. The test looks for certain enzymes that occur in the body when certain drugs are consumed. (EROWID, 2007) Unfortunately for employers, the EMIT test is one of the most unreliable of the tests available. It