TESTING ‘ENCOURAGES HARD DRUG USE’

Random drug-testing at work will drive employees to swap cannabis for hard drugs that do not linger in the system, as it is already said to have done in prison, a human rights spokeswoman will warn today.

Kay Springham, of the Scottish Human Rights Centre, will speak out at a conference in Stirling debating the growing trend towards workplace drug-testing.

The main dissenting voice at the Scottish Drugs Forum conference will be chief constable of Grampian, Dr Ian Oliver, who controversially introduced drug-testing for his police officers.

In a speech titled ‘Why Drug Testing is Necessary’, Dr Oliver will argue that employers have a social duty to uncover drug-takers and stop them. He has declined to speak to the press about his views.

But Ms Springham said yesterday: "I don’t think employers have either the right or the responsibility to drug-test their employees. All they are really entitled to know about them is whether the person is able to do their job.

"If you were a moderate user of cannabis, which you knew would stay in your system for five weeks while heroin would only stay in your system for one day, and you were worried you were going to be caught, there is a concern you would switch to something less inoffensive.

"It is a concern that what has happened in prisons might happen if there was to be random testing of employees." Random drug-testing would also poison the relationship between employers and their workers, said Ms Springham.

The information given by the test would merely be that the person had taken a narcotic substance - not how much, nor when, nor whether they were an occassional user or a drug abuser, nor whether they had ever been incapable of performing their job.

"It is not like breathalysing for alcohol, where there is an agreed limit beyond which impairment is assumed. The only judgement it would enable the employer to make is moral..." Ms Springham said.

"Employers do have a legitimate concern in finding out if their employee is a drug abuser, but they can do that by observation and performance appraisal. There are plenty of signs, like absenteeism, poor time-keeping, mood swings and irritablility, to identify whether someone has a drug problem."

Drug-testing could become an expensive way of lulling employers into a false sense of security, she added, as determined drug-takers would find a way round the tests, as has allegedly happened in prison.

Prisoners subjected to mandatory drug testing (MDT) admit to having carried in urine samples from drug-free prisoners to substitute for their own urine. If they test positive for drugs they have extra days added to their prison sentence and lose privileges.

Prison MDT results show no major switches from one type of drug to another in the months since testing was introduced.

But both prisoners and the prison officers who administer the tests have warned of a swing towards taking heroin in prison, which unlike cannabis is quickly purged from the body and is thus difficult to detect.

Graham MacArthur, who has organised the Stirling conference for the Scottish Drugs Forum, said the aim was to stimulate a thorough debate before Scotland drifted much further down the path of accepting drug-testing at work.

"Testing is creeping in all over the place," Mr MacArthur said.

"In terms of people like airline pilots and drivers, who have to make crucial decisions and look after people’s safety, there is little dispute. It is clear we have to ensure these people are screened and have neither drug nor alcohol problems.