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Drugged workers a rising problem BY LINDA CLARKE
LINDA.C@THEGUARDIAN.CO.NZ
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Mid Canterbury farmers are among employers turning to professional drugtesters to help them eliminate drugs and alcohol in the workplace. In Canterbury, four out of 100 people are failing pre-employment drug-testing while random testing in workplaces is seeing a 5.1 per cent fail rate. General manager of The Drug Detection Agency in Canterbury and Otago, Therese Gibbens, said cannabis use among staff was the biggest problem for farmers and other employers while positive tests for methamphetamine, or P, use were on the rise. Gibbens was in Ashburton yesterday as part of a Federated Farmers workshop to talk about testing for drug and alcohol use. She said farming was one of her company’s biggest growth areas.
TDDA conducted 140,000 drug tests last year, 90 per cent by urine testing. The company has mobile vans to carry out pre-employment and post-incident testing, as well as random and reasonable grounds testing for other employees. She said farmers needed standalone drug and alcohol testing policies, linked to their employment contracts. These should detail the consequences of failed tests, which could include dismissal or rehabilitation. TDDA also carries out drug tests across the retail, construction, roading and other sectors, as employers meet new health and safety regulations that say they must identify and mitigate hazards in the workplace. Drugs and alcohol have been identified as contributors in some workplace deaths or serious injuries.
“We know from the post-incident testing that drugs and alcohol are a factor. We know that people who are off their face don’t work as well as people who are clean.” Gibbens said the standalone policies should also detail what happened to employees if they were caught cheating a urine or other test or simply refused to do so. Some workers tried to foil the test by drinking copious amounts of water. This resulted in a urine test that was mostly water and only served to raise suspicions of drug use. Others tried to hide clean urine samples on their body and use them.
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