drug/alcohol testing policy: effective?

"Jim Fisher" wrote in message
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[...]
Back in my younger years, I quit smoking pot because I got a job that did
random drug testing.

Did you quit smoking pot because they were doing drug testing? Or because
the job was incompatible with smoking pot?

The former is a pretty idiotic approach to the issue, but the latter seems
more consistent with what you wrote about smoking pot and flying, and does
not invoke drug testing as a solution.

[...]
Testing kits aren't "prohibitively expensive" as your buddy says.
Twenty-five people can be tested for about $250.00. That may be
"expensive" depending on how many you must do but I would not put it in
the "prohibitively expensive" category.

$10/person isn't too bad for a company with 25 people to test. But there
are plenty of one-man operations that are also required to undergo drug
testing (they contract with a testing company, who randomly selects from
their "clients" to determine who will be tested). I admit, I don't know
what the cost is, but I can easily imagine that it's prohibitive at small
scales.

Either way, the cost of NOT doing pre, post and interim drug screening
would be much higher than I'm willing to pay. Too damn many people are
like I used to be.

IMHO, if a person is sober on the job, it doesn't matter what they are doing
off the job. Drug testing does not distinguish between the two, and
discriminates against people simply because of their lifestyle.

Maybe if I thought that drug testing was really being done out of a genuine
concern for people's safety, I'd feel differently. But I'm not convinced
that drug testing enhances safety all that much, and it's clear that the
primary push for drug testing is being done by the people who stand to make
lots of money doing it (as with various security regulations and similar
social expenditures).

Pete