Drug use “snapshot” reports on current levels in Workplace

According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration, an agency withing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1 in 10 (10%) of the employees nationwide admit to illegal drug use within the last month- most of them full time employees.

Some of the highest rates of illegal drug users among business types are:

---Restaurants 19.2%

---Construction workers 17.8%
---Truck Drivers 14.7%

Most of the drug use involved marijuana or cocaine.

How effective is your current drug policy within your company? Do you know if any of you employees are operating machinery or driving your company vehicles while under the influence of illegal drugs? How about heavy prescription drugs? This is also a large problem.

Make sure you have a RANDOM drug testing policy that every employee has signed off on. In addition, make it MANDATORY that all employees that have an accident on the job are drug tested within 8 hours of the injury. You are putting your business at a very high risk if you’re not doing both of these things!

In addition, more than 18% of employees were found to be on heavy prescription medication, mostly anti-depressants or barbiturates, while they are at work. Scary, isn’t it?