Drug Tests
More and more schools and workplaces are instituting drug tests in order to make sure that the people involved are not taking drugs. The question that a lot of people ask is whether or not the drug testing is having any major effect. While the people who are caught with drugs in their system are denied either their jobs or their school activities, it seems like in most cases the number of people who are taking drugs are actually increasing instead of decreasing. One reason for this is that there are a number of different ways to avoid testing positive on drug tests, and in fact, depending on the drug that you take, the drug will be detectable for a different length of time.
If you’re taking a drug like marijuana, it’s possible that the drug could remain in your system for up to a month. As a result, a lot of people who are in danger of having random drug tests, or having drug tests on a regular basis, have moved from marijuana to other drugs that have potentially higher health effects. For this reason, drug tests for employment and drug tests by the school systems are more likely to cause more harm than good – and most people have found ways to beat these drug tests anyway. In fact, there hasn’t been any evidence to suggest that fewer people are taking drugs after drug tests are instituted.
This is due to the fact that we only have numbers and statistics based on the number of people who are caught. This number fluctuates based on how well people are doing at avoiding the drug tests as well as how good the particular tests are at detecting attempts to tamper. Another problem with drug tests is that they are major violations of privacy. It goes a little bit beyond just detecting illegal drugs, after all. In fact, a lot of urine tests can detect both drugs as well as other conditions like pregnancies, illnesses or prescription drugs.
Considering that it’s hard enough to keep your medical records private as it is, the fact that drug tests can further erode your privacy regarding your health is certainly frightening. Not only that, but some of the non-drug related results that can come up during urine tests can (and sometimes are) be used to deny you a job. Lots of companies are hesitant to hire pregnant women because of maternity leave, and since some illnesses can result in higher health care bills, drug tests can result in even more discrimination. Essentially, drug tests violate privacy, and do not have a provable effect on the number of people who are taking drugs. Luckily, if you’re called on to take drug tests, there are a number of options available to you.