But it's the best signal we've got. Ignore it at your peril. Perhaps you are too young or live in too modern a world to understand how dangerous rare events are. Constructive paranoia has helped select evolutionary survivors for a very long time.
Except that's not true. We can actually test for sobriety. And by doing drug testing instead, we're actually using a worse signal in place of a better signal!
> Perhaps you are too young or live in too modern a world to understand how dangerous rare events are. Constructive paranoia has helped select evolutionary survivors for a very long time.
I'm not really sure if there's more than a vague analogy connecting Diamond's hypotheses to drug testing policy. And I don't find that exceptionally vague analogy to be compelling evidence. (And I'm one of those people who doesn't even buy a lot of Diamond's work anyways; in fact, I think I'm in good company on this one among the sober, grown-up anthropologists out there...)
My weathered experience tells me to prefer hard data over vague analogies to pop science writers who are themselves known more for their well-written vague analogies than their well-researched hard science :-)
I'm not suggesting you do (although I know others on this thread are suggesting that).
Administer sobriety tests the same way you currently administer drug tests -- upon application, and randomly. They're a lot cheaper so you can actually get more data for less $/time.
Drug test measure whether you smoked weed anytime last weeks, up to three months if I recall right. It has little to do with whether you are high first day on the job. It has more to do with drug war then with incidents.
It's basically only about weed; pretty much all other "hard drugs" (cocaine, meth, etc) flush out of your system within hours to a few days (assuming you can abstain that long - which isn't a given depending on how far into them you are), while THC and such from weed hang around in the body for about a month (30 days or so), and as you noted - up to 3 months (for a hair sample test).
So you could smoke a joint today (ok, maybe a bit more than a joint), and nothing more - and three months later they take a hair sample and find you a dirty guilty pot smoker. Yer fired! Or not hired in the first place.
Even in the best case scenario, you have to abstain for 30 days; so if you're a regular user of weed, and you want to change jobs, you'll have to plan ahead, or just be out of work for 30 days while you let it get out of your system. Doable if you have savings, I suppose.
As far as "random drug testing", I honestly think its more of a threat to instill fear, than something actually done. Drug testing isn't cheap, and a true random test would test all employees, but due to the expense, only the larger companies could conceivably do it. Smaller organizations would tend to only do testing "after the fact" or if there is credible reason to believe that a certain person is having issues (visibly impaired or something) - then a "targeted test" under the guise of a random test can be done.
Even then, such a test might only be correlative, and not indicate the true cause; someone might, for instance, cause an accident or such due to a heated argument they had just before the incident with a coworker, but they get tested and fail the test because of a party they went to a couple weeks before where they smoked some weed.
No it isn't. You've probably been seen and healed by a great doctor that smokes or has smoked weed recently. There is a good chance your financial advisor, lawyer and/or boss smokes or has smoked weed recently. Most professionals who do certainly don't boast about it with the witch hunting Puritan culture in the US, but there are a lot of them out there, and you've probably never noticed because it's not noticeable.
So if there was a test that could tell if you've eaten chocolate in the last 30 days, then you required applicants to not eat chocolate ever, passing that would be an indicator of a good employee?
Seems really arbitrary and pointless when you take out all the drug war baggage out of it.
I think it odd that the strongest opposition to testing is from people who clearly don't smoke.
Its a test of self introspection and awareness and intelligence, not solely discipline.
Its not a simple binary "have you been within 10 meters of the devils weed in the past month T/F" question.
To fail a test after 30 days of normal peeing takes something like weeks of Cheech and Chong 2.0 behavior to build up the level of metabolites in the body. There's a whole spectrum of use vs time required to test clean. A buzz a couple days ago will not fail a test. Wake and bake the morning of the test is a fail. The kind of person dumb enough to wake and bake the morning of a pee test is not the kind of person I'd want on a jobsite.
There's also the question of motivation. There are supplements which basically make you pee alot to pee out the THC and there are test kits at walgreens for $10 that are fairly accurate to determine if you pass. To fail a pee test you have to be unmotivated enough to not even try.
Responsible intelligent users will not have trouble passing a test. Irresponsible or unintelligent users are doomed, but those are the kind of people that cause workplace fatalities anyway, so no real loss.
This is all aside from unemployment fraud type stuff.
Your first use will usually stay in your system for 5-8 days
If you use cannabis 2-4 times per week and then stop, you’ll test positive for 11-18 days
If you smoke 5-6 times per week, it’ll stay in your urine for 33-48 days
For Medical cannabis patients and people in the #smokeweedeveryday club,
THC-COOH will stay in your urine for 49-63 days
Marijuana, Single Use in urine wears off after 1-7+ days. So no, it is not just that the person baked in the morning. Regular usage, 7-100 days and that is not "going completely stoned every day at that period".
"There are supplements which basically make you pee alot to pee out the THC"
Frankly, there is level of education and willingness to study I don't expect from dude hired for simple construction or retail job and you are quite getting there. For the record, I know construction workers.
"there are test kits at walgreens for $10 that are fairly accurate to determine if you pass. To fail a pee test you have to be unmotivated enough to not even try."
I mean, why would he wasted $10 on that? Cheaper to do the test and if you fail then look for job elsewhere. Claim here is that now is a good time for blue collar workers so presumably they can try elsewhere. And maybe they will pee enough from beer they drink more then they smoke in the meantime, so they will pass without really knowing why.
"Its a test of self introspection and awareness and intelligence, not solely discipline."
Self introspection and awareness? Yep, there is no difference between that and hypothetical chocolate or sex tests.
I used to approach drug tests with this mentality, but legalization and decriminalization across various states will muddy the picture. There will be a lot more everyday partakers as it starts being sold in safe storefronts, in forms that don't stink or make you hack a lung (cute vaporizer pens, delicious edibles). There will be a lot of middle class, white-collar people that prefer a "feel good" gummy bear after work over a beer.
At that point (and a lot of states are already there!), "Jeez, just don't smoke for a few days" doesn't cut it - 30 days is probably a safe guideline. When it comes to this for a lot of fine prospective employees, I would think it's time to reconsider the value of these tests as a proxy for introspection/awareness/intelligence.
> Its a test of self introspection and awareness and intelligence, not solely discipline.
If that was true it would be more efficient to design a test (assuming such a test is currently possible) to measure self-introspection, awareness, intelligence, and discipline. Oh, wait -- don't many people claim an undergraduate degree is also a signal for those things?
Yeah because you don't have to smoke pot to understand bodily autonomy, you just have to treat people with respect. If you've gotten drunk this month you don't deserve the job you have is basically what you're saying.
So a young person decides to sort themselves out, stops smoking and goes job hunting. They're ready to go! And then? What, wait around for a month with nothing to do? Eventually get bored, hang around with their mates and boom, cycle repeats.
Do you really think that's an appropriate job requirement? Should we also have fasting requirements for our jobs? For context I don't smoke, but I'm also not deluded enough to think that we should be testing arbitrary datapoints about their personal life. If they can do the job, they should get the job, and if they can't then they shouldn't. If you aren't hiring capable workers because of puritanical ideals you're wasting money.
Drug tests are completely arbitrary, unrelated to job performance, and employers who use those drug tests don't deserve any sympathy when it comes to labor shortage.
Meh. You have to write down any drug use on your application, and they will most likely ask you about that in the poly. The poly is what busts a lot of people.
It's actually ok to have used drugs in the past, you just have to be honest about it and write a letter saying something about not doing so moving forward (an acquaintance of mine had to do this... not sure what the specifics were).
Once people are have a clearance, most of the tests are decidedly not random. They can be requested for erratic behavior at work (e.g., passing out), but they are especially common for people who are formally busted somehow for illegal drug and/or alcohol abuse. Get a DUI, yeah, you're going to be "randomly" chosen for a test more often than anyone else you know.
If you look at the system holistically with regards to drug testing for folks with clearances, most people would say that the implementation is fairly reasonable. The rules seem incredibly draconian on the surface, but the actual enforcement is decidedly less so.
As I understand it practice the rules can be fairly flexible.
I have also heard they mostly stopped drug testing people as they where having difficulty finding enough competent, honest, non-drug users in technical fields. Or possibly more importantly they did not want discrete drug use to be a means of blackmailing someone.
PS: I can only recommend someone either answers all questions accurately and only those specific questions asked, or discreetly declines an investigation and looks for another line of work.
I know you can get a Secret and I have heard you can get a Top Secret depending on the agency. Though some agencies give random drug tests to people with Top Secret clearances and many contractors also have their own testing policy.
They do however ask about drug usage both on the application and when doing their investigation.
Id be surprised for TS I looked at a job at Hanslope Park which would have required DV (TS) clearance and you had to have drug tests. Didn't get a second interview was well over qualified - but one has to keep the DHSS happy or id lose my nugatory benefits.
But it's the best signal we've got. Ignore it at your peril. Perhaps you are too young or live in too modern a world to understand how dangerous rare events are. Constructive paranoia has helped select evolutionary survivors for a very long time.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/29/science/jared-diamonds-gui...