Skip to main content

Workplace Drug Testing - Policy Talk

Workplace drug testing

 PolicyTalk provides an overview of topical debates to help senior policy makers find the right solutions for the community on alcohol and other drug issues.

No one objects to the breath testing of automobile drivers to ensure their performance is not impaired by high concentrations of alcohol. Similarly, people who are engaged in safety critical work in occupations such as transport, or by the use of heavy machinery, may also expect to undergo drug testing to reduce the risk of harm to themselves and others.
Yet in other contexts workplace drug testing is far more controversial. The debate about drug testing employees can involve considerations of individual privacy, the financial cost to employers of testing, the efficacy of testing, and the workforce’s response to testing.
This latest edition of PolicyTalk by Donna Bull, consultant to the Australian Defence Force and the Australian and International Pilots Association, submits the issue of drug testing in the workplace to analysis. It reviews what is known of the prevalence of drug use by members of the workforce, (although such drug use does not necessarily occur in work time); it outlines the history of and the case for workplace testing; reports on problems encountered in testing of employees; and provides alternative ways of preventing drug related harm in the workplace.
I am confident that this PolicyTalk will be of great interest and benefit to everyone who is concerned to reduce alcohol and other drug problems in Australia and I hope you will let us know of your opinion.


Download it here.

Jump ahead to:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Methamphetamine use and addiction in Australia

methamphetamine use and addiction in Australia By Nicole Lee Associate Professor at the National Centre for Education and Training on Addiction at Flinders University More commonly known by the street names speed, ice or crystal meth, both amphetamine and methamphetamine belong to a group of stimulant drugs called amphetamines. Australia has one of the highest rates of illicit methamphetamine use in the world and the highest use among English-speaking countries. Around 2.5% of Australians over 14 years – around half a million people – have used methamphetamine in the last year. This rate is three- to five-times higher than the USA, Canada (0.5%) or the UK (1%). Illicit use The illegal manufacture of street amphetamines in Australia is almost exclusively methamphetamine. Illicit methamphetamine is manufactured in local “meth labs” and also imported from South-East Asia. The drug usually comes in powder or pills (speed) o...
Post a Comment
Read more

NSW Police overlooked scientific advice about hair sample

NSW Police overlooked scientific advice about hair sample and sacked drug-tested sergeant Eamonn Duff  March 12 2017  A single strand of hair that destroyed the life of a long-serving Sydney police officer has the potential to influence the future of not just the entire NSW Police Force but all workplaces across NSW. Sergeant George Zisopoulos insists he has been wrongly dismissed due to one of his hair follicles which returned a positive drug test reading. But while the state's top cop, Commissioner Andrew Scipione, has determined that, on the "balance of probabilities", the officer knowingly consumed drugs, scientific opinion suggests otherwise. Leading forensic experts have cast doubts over the decision to sack Sergeant Zisopoulos, concluding there is "no evidence" the substances found on his hair were ingested and that the minute readings may have been caused by "external contamination". ergeant Zisopoulos, who is the first NSW...
Post a Comment
Read more

GHB date rape drug is back and pill testing may not help, says ED doctor

GHB the Date Rape Drug Discovered by a Russian chemist in the nineteenth century, used as a general anaesthetic in 1970s Dunedin, picked up by Californian bodybuilders in the 1990s - the drug known as GHB has travelled a long road to its current resurgence in the Australian party scene. On the weekend in Melbourne, more than 20 people were hospitalised after reportedly overdosing at the Electric Parade festival. GHB was blamed - one of the biggest overdoses of the drug since 10 people collapsed outside at a Gold Coast nightclub in 1996. "It's back again," exclaimed Dr David Caldicott, a Canberra-based emergency department doctor who was in Adelaide when GHB hit in the '90s. "I thought we managed to explain to people it was a stupid drug to take. Around Australia there will be emergency doctors everywhere holding their heads in their hands going, 'Oh God!'. "A new generation has started learning the mistakes all over again." ...
Post a Comment
Read more