A recent Canadian case concerning drug tests in the workplace threatens to change the employer-employee relationship. The Globe and Mail tells the story well here.
It has always seemed to me that drug testing potentially affects four groups of people:
1) Those who are tested but aren't taking drugs. These people have their privacy violated and are treated as suspects for no good reason.
2) Those who are tested and are taking drugs but it's not affecting their job performance. Whilst the state may have an interest in policing their work, their employer does not.
3) Those who are tested and are taking drugs and it is affecting their job performance. Well, the employer can tell that this is the case without testing, so.. what was the point?
4) Those who have a habit and it's so bad that they can't hold down a job. Those are the people that really need help - but they're not affected because they're not in the workplace to begin with.
So one is left wondering - qui bono?
I admit that this broad approach risks oversimplification, of course - particularly in light of the Canadian situation, which concerns employees who may avoid detection from general observation for the time being, but may conduct themselves in some catastrophic way (using heavy machinery on a building site, for example), where that catastrophic act is caused by the use of drugs which might have been detected. But it's a pretty specific, long-odds example with which to justify a shift of such a kind, isn't it? Furthermore, allowing it for that example would probably be the thin end of the wedge, the start of the slippery slope, etcetera.
I am aware that there's an alleged contradiction between, or tension the relationship between, my social conservatism and my commitment to small government and minimal interference in the lives of individuals. To those that level that allegation, one reply is that I avoid intrusion which promises dubious or no benefits (like the potential for removing drugs from the workplace through such testing), even when it is aimed at eliminating things with which I disagree (like drug abuse).
More widely, there is of course a fifth group who are affected:
5) Employers, who assume a quasi-policing role, often against their will.
