Drug Use by Selected Population Groups - Drugs In The Workplace

Drug use in the workplace is tracked by SAMHSA in its national survey that captures the employment status of its survey respondents (http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/NHSDA/A-11/TOC.htm). The SAMHSA survey is based on self-reporting. The results of drug tests performed on behalf of private and public employers are another lens FIGURE 4.10
Percentage of 8th, 10th, and 12th grade students who used heroin in the past year, 1975-2003
SOURCE: Lloyd D. Johnston, Patrick M. O'Malley, Jerald G. Bachman, and John E. Schulenberg, "Heroin: Trends in Annual Use, Risk, Disapproval, and Availability, Eighth, Tenth, and Twelfth Graders," in Monitoring the Future: National Results on Adolescent Drug Use—Overview of Key Findings, 2003, The University of Michigan, Institute for Social Research and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, National Institutes of Health, National Institute on Drug Abuse, June 2004, http://www.monitoringthefuture.org/pubs/monographs/overview2003.pdf (accessed February 10, 2005) through which drug use in the workplace can be viewed. Drug testing results are published periodically by Quest Diagnostics Incorporated ("The Drug Testing Index," http://www.questdiagnostics.com/). Quest Diagnostics is the nation's leading provider of drug testing services.

In recent years SAMHSA has collected data by those employed full time, part time, those unemployed, and an "other" category that includes the retired, disabled, homemakers, students, and others to whom the employment/unemployment categories do not apply. Data for the most recent year show (as data in past surveys also consistently show) that the youngest age group in the work-age population, those eighteen to twenty-five, use drugs at higher rates than do those twenty-six years old and older. In this category of users, as in all others, marijuana largely accounted for the majority of uses whereas only small proportions of the population used the more dangerous drugs.

FIGURE 4.11
Percentage of 8th, 10th, and 12th grade students who used ecstasy in the past year, 1975-2003
SOURCE: Lloyd D. Johnston, Patrick M. O'Malley, Jerald G. Bachman, and John E. Schulenberg, "MDMA (Ecstasy): Trends in Annual Use, Risk, Disapproval, and Availability, Eighth, Tenth, and Twelfth Graders," in Monitoring the Future: National Results on Adolescent Drug Use—Overview of Key Findings, 2003, The University of Michigan, Institute for Social Research and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, National Institutes of Health, National Institute on Drug Abuse, June 2004, http://www.monitoringthefuture.org/pubs/monographs/overview2003.pdf (accessed February 10, 2005)

Use rates are higher for part-time workers than full-time workers and highest for the unemployed for the eighteen-to-twenty-five group. In the older age group, the unemployed used drugs at the highest rates as well, but those in the older age group were less likely to have used drugs overall.

Table 4.6 and Table 4.7 provide data on drug use and employment status. In 2003 nearly two-thirds of full-time workers ages eighteen to twenty-five had used illicit drugs in their lifetime, and about one-third in that age group had used drugs in the past year. For full-time workers aged twenty-six and older, the figures were 55.7% and 12.2%. The percentages in each employment status category remained relatively stable between 2002 and 2003.

Demographic and Occupational Profile

Using data from the 2000 household survey, SAMHSA completed and published a special analysis showing data for full-time workers aged eighteen to forty-nine by gender, age groups, occupation, and employing sector. (See Table 4.8.)

In 2000 men working full time were 1.5 times more likely to be using drugs than women (past-thirty-days usage) and twice as likely to have been dependent upon or abusing drugs (past-year usage). When the eighteen-to-forty-nine age group is segmented into three groups, drug use is highest among those eighteen to twenty-five (14.9% current use), lower among those twenty-six to thirty-four (7.9%), and lowest among those thirty-five to forty-nine (5.5%)—once more demonstrating that drug use diminishes with age. Within occupational groupings, production, craft, and repair workers had the highest current usage (11.2%) and those practicing some professional specialty had the lowest (4.7%). Executive/administrative occupations were toward the low end (6.5%), and those in the service industry at the higher end (9.7%). By type of industry, people working in construction and mining had the highest rate of drug use, at 12.3%, followed by those in the wholesale and retail sector, at 10.8%. The two lowest rated groups were government employees (3.7% using drugs currently) and those providing professional services (5%).

Drug Testing of Employees

Another view of drug use in the workplace is presented by actual counts of people who tested positive for illicit drugs, known in the testing industry as "positivity rates." People are tested as a condition of employment, periodically, on return to duty, or at random—all such tests based on corporate or government agency policy. People are also tested for cause when behavioral deviations from the norm suggest their involvement with drugs; tests are also performed after accidents. According to the American Management Association's annual survey of workplace medical testing (http://www.amanet.org/research/pdfs/Medical_testing_04.pdf), 61.8% of companies surveyed engaged in employee drug testing in 2004; 54.5% of these companies test new employees, including qualified applicants who have been offered a job pending results of a physical. Under federal law, the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission require the testing of "safety-sensitive" workers; pilots, bus drivers, and truck drivers fall into this category as do people who work in nuclear power plants.

Positivity rates as measured by Quest Diagnostics' 2003 drug testing index have been dropping. (See Table 4.9 and Table 4.10.) In 1988, 13.6% of employees undergoing tests showed positive results. The rate had been nearly halved by 1994 to FIGURE 4.12
Prevalence of drug use among 8th, 10th, and 12th graders, 1991-2002
SOURCE: Adapted from L.D. Johnston, P.M. O'Malley, and J.G. Bachman, Tables 5, 6, and 7," Trends in 30-Day Prevalence of Selected Drugs," in Monitoring the Future, University of Michigan, National Institute on Drug Abuse, 2002, http://www.monitoringthefuture.org/pubs/monographs/vol1_2001.pdf (accessed March 31, 2005) 7.5%; Quest Diagnostics' most recent compilation showed that the rate was down to 4.5% in 2003. The types of drugs used by those testing positively has changed from 1999 to 2003, with use of amphetamines, methadone, and opiates, for example, rising, and use of barbiturates, cocaine, and marijuana decreasing.

1988-2003 data from SAMHSA's national household survey show that in the period 1988 through 1993, full-time workers reporting on their own drug use were a consistently lower percentage of the workforce than as measured by drug testing results. Both SAMHSA and Quest Diagnostics, however, showed a dropping prevalence of drug use. After 1993, self-reported rates were consistently higher than those shown by drug testing results. The Quest Diagnostics index measures very current drug use, current enough so that the drugs are still detectable in blood or urine samples, whereas the SAMHSA data include drug use within the past thirty days.

Drug test outcomes for the workforce population tested, as reported by Quest Diagnostics, showed that in 2003 marijuana was the leading cause for a positive result in 55% of cases, followed by cocaine (13.8% of positives), amphetamines (9.0%, a fairly large jump from previous years) and opiates (6.3%). (See Table 4.10.) Heroin is in the opiate category. According to Quest Diagnostics, in 1997 the leading categories were the same, but opiates held the third rank and amphetamines came in fourth.