About – Effective Drug Free Policies & Programs

This blog is for persons interested in discussing drug-free policy and program issues in the workplace and school environments.

The site is dedicated to helping your organizations share best practices and be able to develop, implement, and maintain an effective drug free polices and programs.   We specifically offer information about successful new drug-free workplace  and drug-free school programs, advanced drug abuse testing technology,  and associated educational and support programs.

“ As a change from traditional TPA’s, and drug testing laboratories. We focus upon the business and safety issues associated with substance misuse, and we are able to  document the benefits solutions can provide.  Specifically, On-site oral fluid technology enables random testing, while consultative implementation & educational services, as well as INTERNET software, assure ease-of-implementation, consistency, and compliance”.

America currently loses in excess of $150 billion per year due to drug abuse in the work place alone, and over 20,000 lives due to drug (not including alcohol) misuse.   10% of all employees abuse drugs regularly  (monthly) and on average each drug abuser costs the corporation in excess of $10,000 per year.

Thus, for every 1,000 employee, a corporation loses over $1,000,000 per year.

In order to attempt to address this problem, corporations have traditionally dealt with their “drug problem” by outsourcing pre-employment screening.  In most cases, this was assumed to be “best practice” and minimized the involvement of company personnel.  However, as the above data clearly shows, this approach does not address the problem.  Studies have shown that an effective program to reduce drug abuse on the payroll must include random testing of employees to deter drug abuse. There are two main reasons why corporations have not take advanget of the benefits of random drug testing, ,and mitigated the drain on their P&L caused by workplace substance misuse.

• First is the lack of awareness of the size and nature of the problem.  Since the costs associated with drug abuse are spread across a number of different lines on the P&L such as Workers Compensation premiums, absenteeism, turnover, health care utilization, inventory shrinkage, and work place accidents, most companies have not identified the underlying cause of the profit leak.

• Second, for those companies that do recognize the problem, there is a reluctance to try to implement random testing since it conflicts with their traditional approach of outsourcing pre-employment screening.