Drinkers Need Not Apply?

Researchers are developing tests that can detect traces of alcohol in urine for up to five days, in blood for up to three weeks, and in hair for even longer. The Scotsman (based on an article in New Scientist) reports the tests "could let a GP know if someone is a light or heavy drinker and tell investigators if a driver or worker involved in an accident was drunk at the time, even if they were not tested until days later." They also "could attract the interest of employers and insurance companies."

Assuming that employers do start using these tests, will they insist on complete abstinence (as with marijuana) or simply try to weed out problem drinkers? It's possible, I suppose, that teetotalers, on average, make better employees. But I doubt it.

[Thanks to Allen St. Pierre for the link.]

Comments

[one more for the road]

And I suppose depilation will be all the rage among working stiffs.

[JSM]

Could a bright side to this madness be the revelation that a majority of Americans actually do more than just drink? If everyone is doing it, then....

I just hope it doesn't have to go there.

[Dave-O-Rama]

From the article: "the tests 'could ... tell investigators if a driver or worker involved in an accident was drunk at the time, even if they were not tested until days later.'"

This seems problematic at best. It should be possible to determine if someone had been drunk within a certain timeframe, but presumeably one drink would 'reset' any rate-law based decay rate of alcohol-derivatives in the blood. Ultimately, the way to get around this is to publicly have a drink at a bar with a friend (paying by creditcard to ensure a papertrail) sometime before getting tested.

The hair test is the only test that can give any real idea of someone's drinking habits over time, and even then it's unreliable for anything other than 'they've had a drink within the past 3 weeks'.

[magatha]

re: one more for the road's comment -- i see a big future in laser hair removal.

bald drinkers of the world, unite!

[Critic]

Return property rights to business owners and the debate disappears.

[Heather]

"Return property rights to business owners and the debate disappears."

I'm sorry, I'm so not getting this. What property rights to business owners? What debate-- the debate over mandatory drug testing by employers?

[Mark Fox]

Eventually, we'll all be disqualified from working anywhere. I can hardly wait to collect my unemployable and disability checks.

[Gordon Shumway]

Haven't these genius scientists ever heard of endogenous alcohol? Do they think we just miraculously evolved the gene for alcohol dehydrogenase in the past few thousand years that humans have been making and using fermented beverages?

Bunch of fucking new earth creationists if you ask me.

[Critic]

Heather,

The Debate:
Whether individuals have the right to freely associate and enter into formal and informal contracts, including employer/employee arrangements.

A business owner whose rights are guaranteed has the right to establish and enforce the rules and policies of his company. A prospective employee has the right to negotiate his terms of hire, but he can make no demands on the proprietor and he is free to shop his talents elsewhere if the parties cannot come to an agreement. If he agrees to random drug testing, he does so voluntarily.

An enlightened business owner will have an equally enlightened drug policy. But an overly zealous owner who saddles his employees with oppresive rules and procedures will soon find himself losing valued talent, or worse, having the talent avoid him entirely.

[Mark Fox]

Critic: Great summary. From your 4:56 post, wouldn't it be rights to contract and associate rather than property rights, in this case?

[Toxic]

I imagine that such an ambiguous test would cause more lawsuits than solved problems.

[Critic]

"I have gotten far more out of alcohol than it has gotten out of me."

W.S. Churchill

[Heather Burns]

What are they going to do if the drug tests get too good and too accurate.
Some of my most creative and studious co-workers went through great lengths to get negative results on their drug tests.
It really takes a lot of initiative to go through the process of smuggling clean yearin, taking odd concoctions of gateraide and powdered geletine and pulling of the timing, and all the other various methods.

[loggerhead]

In Britain, at least you might not want to be a teatotaller...

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/08/11/1060588325125.html?from=storyrhs

[Critic]

Mark,

Freedom of association - including freedom to choose one's friends, associates and employees - cannot exist without property rights. If I am not secure in my home, anyone may enter at any time. If I am not secure in my business, any random worker may be forced on me without my consent. If I am not free to establish standards in my workplace, I have lost the use and disposal of my property.

[SteveInClearwater]

I'd have to dig in our archives to find the cite, but we had news coverage of a decent survey about two years ago which demonstrated about 40% of employees in the tech industries were regular marijuana users.

Most such companies do NOT drug test, on accounta their smarter stance which judges workers by the content of their performance rather than by the color of their urine.

That, and they had a smaller pool of qualified applicants, so they had less room to be unduly discriminatory by using a sillyass pre-employment drug test.

[Jennifer]

Three and a half years ago, when I first got out of graduate school, I'd thought about applying for a library assistant job. The application demanded that I take a, quote, "drug and alcohol test," although at the time I had been legally old enough to drink for over nine years.

I didn't bother applying. They could only afford to pay wages of seven bucks an hour (starvation level here in Connecticut), yet they could afford the hundred-dollar tests to determine whether or not I'd ever changed my state of consciousness?

I can only assume that a nationwide epidemic of alcoholic librarians has been threatening our freedom lately.

[Critic]

They may very well become drunks as books are replaced by computers at many libraries.

[Mark Fox]

Critic: Enforcing standards in your workplace seems like an association issue, if those standards are based in part upon what people do (or who they are) when not at work.

If your company prefers not to contract with those who wear tinfoil hats (for example), I might pledge to never wear such a hat while under your employ,even when at home in my lead-lined sarcophagus. If, for some reason (ELF transmissions, perhaps), when at home and off duty, I decide to don a tinfoil hat for the first time in my life, I am immediately in breach of our employment contract, but do not violate your property rights until I show up for work (with or without my hat).

Then, if I didn't tell you, you wouldn't know that I had breached our contract and was violating your rights. If you don't know, am I actually violating your rights and/or does it matter? Under common law, I believe you must show some loss or discomfort to be worthy of a remedy. Is there such thing as conditional tresspass?

[Critic]

Mark,

My own personal stance, were I a business owner, would be to tell my employees that I didn't care what they did on their own time, including drug use. But I would insist they obey my rules while on company time. And if I did notice a pattern of subnormal performance in an employee, drug testing that individual might be an option, though I personally would prefer other means of addressing the problem.

The principle here is: When I lose the right to enforce those rules, my property rights are eroded.

[Mark]

I, for one, would like to point out to the folks proposing laws like this that I am very glad that two notorious drunkards, Churchill and FDR, stood up to that teetotalling Hitler a few decades back.

[Mark S.]

"I'd have to dig in our archives to find the cite, but we had news coverage of a decent survey about two years ago which demonstrated about 40% of employees in the tech industries were regular marijuana users."

GASP! Someone call the Office Of Homeland Security! Our technological infrastructure is infested with Al Qaeda supporters!