"New Kinds of Drug Tests Weighed for Federal Workers

Bush Administration Considers Sampling Hair, Saliva, Sweat"

Christopher Lee, Washington Post

Federal workers who submit to drug screening soon may have their saliva,
sweat or hair tested as the Bush administration increases efforts to deter
and detect illegal drug use among 1.6 million civilian employees.

Officials have relied on urine samples alone in the federal government's
nearly two-decade-old drug-testing program, begun in 1986 when President
Ronald Reagan issued an executive order declaring that the federal
workplace be drug-free. Bush administration officials want to give
agencies the option of using the alternative tests to catch drug use that
urine tests may miss because of masking agents or because an employee took
the drugs weeks earlier.The main goal is to drive home the message to federal workers that it is
not worth risking your job to take drugs, officials said.

"This isn't a 'gotcha' kind of system," said Robert L. Stephenson II,
director of the division of workplace programs in the Substance Abuse and
Mental Health Services Administration. The agency, part of the Department
of Health and Human Services, sets guidelines and oversees drug-testing
programs at federal agencies. "This is a fair, objective, scientifically
defensible program that is aimed at deterrence and in having everybody
believe that if you actually use [drugs], we'll be able to detect it."

The division plans to publish proposed revisions to federal mandatory
drug-testing guidelines in the Federal Register as soon as this month,
Stephenson said.

The public will have 90 days to comment. After a final rule is adopted, it
will take at least six months to implement in most federal workplaces,
Stephenson said. Moreover, the screening labs that work under contract to
federal agencies would have to demonstrate that they can perform the new
tests.

The proposal was first reported last week by the Associated Press.

Officials of federal employee unions said they will study the proposals
closely.

Colleen M. Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union,
said her union previously has opposed sweat tests on the grounds that
scientific studies have shown them to be unreliable. Her staff plans to
review the track record of saliva and hair tests as well.

Mark Roth, general counsel for the American Federation of Government
Employees, said the union fought successful court battles in the 1980s to
force the government to narrow its broad drug-testing program to workers
in "safety-sensitive" jobs.

"To the extent that they are not talking about expanding the scope of
employees under the program, . . . we probably would not have any vehement
objections to what they are doing, so long as it's limited to the more
accurate and less intrusive forms of testing," he said.

Federal drug-testing efforts focus on about 400,000 federal employees who
have security clearances, carry firearms, deal with public safety or
national security, or are presidential appointees. Such employees are
routinely tested when they apply for jobs, and many are subject to random
drug tests throughout their careers.

Other civilian workers typically would only be tested if they were
involved in a workplace accident or displayed signs of possible drug use
on the job, officials said.

In fiscal 2000, the most recent year for which figures are available, drug
tests were performed on 106,493 workers at 118 agencies at a cost of $6.1
million. The number who test positive hovers consistently at about
one-half of 1 percent, he said.

Urine tests cost about $20 to $50 each, and the prices of saliva and sweat
tests are similar, Stephenson said. Hair tests cost more but are expected
to become cheaper as they become more widely used, he said.

Agencies could pick the test that best fits their needs, he said. For
example, a hair test, which can show drug use from months earlier, might
be used to screen job applicants. But an employee involved in an accident
might have an oral swab to determine whether drugs were in his system.

Some employee advocates complain that the new tests are not as accurate as
a urine test. Hair tests in particular can come back positive simply
because a person -- a police officer, say -- was in a room where drugs
were used, they say.

"There's a lot of things not to like [about urine testing], but at least
we've reached a stage where you don't see a lot of false positives when
you use the right labs," said Lewis Maltby, president of the National
Workrights Institute, a nonprofit employee rights group. "Sweat and saliva
testing have potential, but they aren't ready for prime time. . . . Hair
testing is junk science."

Federal workers aren't the only ones with a stake in the proposed changes.
If the government adopts alternative tests, many private employers are
likely to follow suit, officials at testing companies said.

William M. Greenblatt, chief executive of New York-based Sterling Testing
Systems Inc., said: "An argument can be made that 'Would the government
accept it if it wasn't an accurate science?' " The company performs half a
million tests a year, most of them urine tests, for such clients as Con
Edison, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and The Washington
Post, he said.

J. Michael Walsh, a former HHS official who helped design the federal
drug-testing program in the 1980s, said the testing industry has been
pressing the government to adopt the alternative tests. Still, scientific
advances mean it is "very reasonable" for federal officials to examine
whether such tests are worth using, said Walsh, now a consultant on
substance abuse policy whose clients include The Post.

"The industry sort of believes that once this thing hits the Federal
Register that things are going to happen quickly," he said. "I don't think
that's true. My experience has been that change comes very slowly in this
whole workplace arena. It's such a litigious area. I think these big
corporations are very happy with what they are doing. And unless there is
some huge economic incentive to change, change is not going to come
rapidly."