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Yes it is. If your great doctor had to pass a drug test, he would be perfectly capable of abstaining long enough to pass it.



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.


>A buzz a couple days ago will not fail a test.

I don't think that's true.

  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
https://herb.co/2017/02/09/heres-long-weed-stays-urine/

Even if it was true, the fact that it is so easily passible doesn't help the argument that it's not pointless and arbitrary.


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.


Assuming he got over a month's notice, right?

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.


So you're admitting that it's arbitrary.




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