Every business owner wants to be fact-based when making major decisions. Smart businesses gather all the relevant information before determining which course of action is best for them. If you're choosing whether to subject your employees to drug testing, there are some things you must know. Some facts and other stats should guide you in your decision on how to proceed. Here are five.
1. The detection time for most hard drugs is a maximum of 10 days
If your goal is to detect hard drugs, you should know that time is of the essence. While different drugs take different amounts of time to clear from the body, the maximum time for most hard drugs is between seven and 10 days. In some cases, as with cocaine and amphetamines, the detection time can be as little as one day. This should factor into your decision as you decide whether to test for hard drugs. If you have a scheduled drug testing program, employees can easily work around it. If you have random drug testing, your window for detecting hard drugs is quite short.
2. Marijuana stays in the body longer than any other drug
Depending on the type of drug testing you're doing, you might detect the HTC from marijuana up to two months after the person has used the drug. This can make drug testing tricky if you're trying to identify whether someone used drugs during work. If an accident happens and you want to know whether someone was under the influence, for instance, some forms of testing may bring back months-old marijuana use, making the result mostly unusable.
3. Drug testing does lead to false positives
Any company that designs a drug testing protocol must have fail-safes in place to account for false positives. Drug tests are not perfect, even when they are performed by the book. Likewise, various types of foods can give false positives for corresponding drugs.
4. The biggest benefit of drug testing is deterrence
Most companies that conduct drug testing aren't hoping to catch their employees. They use the drug testing program as a means of discouraging drug use. By putting into place a drug testing program that could cost the employee his or her job, the idea is to influence the behavior of employees prior to the test.
5. Drug testing can be expensive
While most companies try to stay as efficient as possible with their drug testing, the costs can still be high. In Florida, for instance, when the state instituted a drug testing program for those on welfare, it paid hundreds of thousands of dollars just to test its citizens. You should be sure the benefits are worth the costs before you embark on a drug testing program.
These drug testing facts can be used to justify a good drug testing program or deter a company that doesn't see the value. In many cases, drug testing can bring benefits to corporate productivity. Wouldn't you want to design a great program that benefits your company over the long run?
