Drug use at work is higher than you may think

drug testing requirements last October, drug testing of employees like pilots, airplane mechanics, and train operators has revealed that drug use at work is increasingly at an alarming rate. The most significant figures are that twice as many employees as previously believed are using heroin and the use of prescription painkillers on the job is soaring. Oral fluid testing of 320,000 employees from the workforce overall, between January and June 2010, detected the heroin marker 6-acetylmorphine at a rate of 0.04%, a huge increase over the 0.008% that had been found through urine tests. “It’s still a low incidence rate,” says Dr. Barry Sample, who runs the employer drug testing business at Quest Diagnostics, which based its findings on the results of more than 350,000 random drug tests. “Even so, you don’t want to see anyone in a public safety role test positive. “We’re also seeing dramatic increases in on-the-job use of prescription opiates like oxycodone and oxymorphone,” sold under the brand names Vicodin and Oxycontin, among others, he says. Results from more than 5.5 million tests showed an 18% jump in opiate positives between 2008 and 2009, and a rise of over 40% since 2005. It is claimed that stress in the workplace, job insecurity and longer working hours all contribute to drug use, particularly the use of legal drugs. It’s a problem that society needs to help solve rather than leaving the individual to do it alone; such communal understanding may go a long way to helping minimize this issue.]]>