day. An addiction radically changes the addict’s priorities. While for most people using drugs is something that could readily be on a list of things to absolutely NOT get done, for an addict, the unstated goal is to structure life around securing and consuming the substance. • Lying among the severely addicted often rises to a high art. Their secret—that they are in thrall to an addiction that they spend most of their time, money and energy in service to and that they will commit illegal acts to serve—cannot be disclosed to friends, family, employers and society at large. Consequently, many addicts are constantly lying to others and are often quite good at it. They often lie to themselves about what is going on, which is one reason why their lies to others are often convincing: they believe what they are saying. • You're likely to see repeated lateness and absences that no longer have plausible justifications. Because addicts often are working to satisfy their addictions, they are otherwise occupied when they should be somewhere in the mainstream community. Many addicts often get very poor sleep, which in and of itself can cause lateness.
Steps to Take
In the same way you might approach an employee with an alcohol problem about getting help, you may do the same for an employee with a controlled-substance problem. It is always a challenge to convince an addict of any type to face a problem. It is even harder when the substance to which the person is addicted is illegal. Unless you’ve caught the person redhanded, he or she is likely to deny or downplay your concerns. But if treatment is an option, the issue can be raised without being overly confrontational.
Creating and implementing a drug-testing policy should only be done with the services of a lawyer specialized in employment law. But an employer or manager can implement some small changes that are likely to have a beneficial effect. First, be rigorous about maintaining punctuality standards. When employment is strongly tied to being where the employee is supposed to be at the exact times he or she is supposed to be there, substance abuse problems are often more conspicuous. Second, don’t provide an employee space to function as an addict at work by having other employees compensate for the suspected addict’s substandard performance. Insist on getting the agreedupon production from the employee. If the employee fails to meet this standard, you may then have legitimate recourse to move forward with termination or other sanctions that are appropriate for the circumstances. In the event that you become strongly convinced an employee has a substanceabuse problem, you have some difficult choices. If you actually discover controlled substances in the possession of the employee (or in the employee’s workspace where other employees do not work), you may call law enforcement. This is a drastic step that, as a criminal defense lawyer, I am reluctant to advise you to take. Once you have involved law enforcement, it is possible that you and your business will be mired in a criminal case for months or even years. In calling law enforcement, you have made yourself a witness and could end up having to testify at a trial. This means being subject to cross-examination from a criminal-defense lawyer like me.
However, there are circumstances under which involving law enforcement should probably always occur: • Discovering substantial amounts of a controlled substance (e.g., you reach into an employee’s desk to retrieve a quarterly report and see a baggie of what is very likely 2 or 3 ounces of methamphetamine) • An employee who works in accounting or otherwise handles money for your business is discovered to likely have a serious addiction at around the same time that financial irregularities pop up. To pull the trigger on such a call, though, without involving a lawyer can have the effect of law enforcement delving deeper into your business than you may want. Unless it is an emergency, call your lawyer before taking any other action. If, for example, an addicted employee has been embezzling from you and you call law enforcement, you might have forensic accountants and fraud examiners looking at every element of your financials going back years. Your protestations that the employee in question has only worked for you for 18 months will not dissuade law enforcement from digging as deeply as they think necessary. Once law enforcement gets involved, they may decide there is probable cause to charge you with something completely unrelated to the investigation. This happens more often than many realize. In today’s tight labor market, terminating otherwise good employees is hard to do. But the opportunity cost of having someone working for you who is consumed by addiction is too great to do nothing about. TAKE
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