Drugs!

Southend1

swingaloo wrote: »

Think people are being deliberately obstructive on this thread.

Obviously if a company are doing drugs tests they have not been put in place for paracetamol!

Clearly not. But if your job involves operating heavy machinery you could be a danger if you were using prescription morphine patches temporarily for a bad back say, just as much as a morphine addict who procures his supplies illegally.

ValHaller

swingaloo wrote: »

Think people are being deliberately obstructive on this thread.

Obviously if a company are doing drugs tests they have not been put in place for paracetamol!

Quite obviously the tests are not intended to give grounds to dismiss anyone using paracetamol.

The problem arises because people generally are not agreed on the scope of these tests, which is reflected on this thread and in OP's workplace.

And that is why it is best to restrict the scope of drug testing to ensuring capability in the work place. Other matters such as damaging the employer's reputation are best detected via events which damage the employer's reputation, not by workplace D&A testing.

esuhl

This new policy is nuts. The company is going to expose itself to the possibility of extremely costly compensation claims.

A quick trip to M&S and a bite of one of their poppy-knot rolls at lunchtime and you'd have a lot more than traces of metabolites in your system -- you'd test positive for opioids!

I was trying to find the news article relating to an anti-drugs MP who unveiled new drug testing kits for nightclub door staff several years ago. Rather embarrassingly his proud demonstration involved giving a sample himself... only to test positive for opiates (as he'd also had a poppy seed roll for lunch). Anyone remember who that was?

Here's some other links. Traces of other drugs can also be detected in "users" who have never broken the law.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/science-eating-a-bagel-can-be-bad-for-your-criminal-record-patrick-matthews-discovered-how-poppy-seeds-confuse-drugtesting-equipment-1468644.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23153685

System

Drug testing has been in use in the workplace for a fair few years now. I am sure that there is a system in place to address these false positives otherwise there would be articles in the papers about people being unfairly dismissed over drugs tests

Yorkie1

swingaloo wrote: »

I work for a big national company and they have recently introduced alcohol and drug testing at our depot.

Anything we are taking on a daily basis on prescription we have to inform them of in advance.

swingaloo wrote: »

Its all done and audited by an outside company who are responsible for doing the test, taking it away to check and doing the follow up. A manager cannot decide on a whim to 'get someone'.

As for the medical issues, our company is quite strict about this anyway. If you are working under medication or with a medical issue then the company should know for insurance reasons and for health and safety.

If anyone is on prescription drugs then they are supposed to inform the company anyway even before this new policy came in.

A company should not be entitled to know about ANY prescription drugs someone is taking as a matter of routine. It should only become relevant where it is clearly relevant to H&S or insurance purposes.

For example, take someone with a mental health condition that is controlled by prescription medication and does not raise any H&S issues. There is no particular reason for the employer to know about this issue. However, your company's policy would require the employee to disclose a medical condition which is, in this example, frequently misunderstood and leads to discrimination.

I note that an independent company performs the tests; if the only disclosure about medical prescriptions was to this company (i.e. it doesn't get disclosed back to the employer), and it was perhaps from a set list as outlined previously by another poster, then that would be different as sensitive personal medical information is not held by the employer.

Even occupational health don't disclose details of medication to employers, and employers aren't entitled to that information.