Forced employee drug tests are an unwarranted, unsanctioned and unnecessary show of force and degradation imposed upon thousands of American workers every year. Not only are drug tests ineffective, but often act as pocket-draining money pits, wasting company cash that could be otherwise used to improve the workplace environment or offer additional employee benefits. The intrusive nature of drug tests places a gap between employee/employer trust, and violates the individual privacy of those being tested — a blatant disregard for privacy rights and an infringement of the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution.

If you’re a college student, chances are you’ve had to take a drug test at one point or the other. Whether it be for an internship, summer job, postgraduate recruitment or even a sports organization, drug testing has been around for years, and is especially commonplace in industries relating to health care and government. A majority of these drug tests take the form of a urine test, which scans for traces of methamphetamines, THC, cocaine, opiates and phencyclidine. To some readers, this may seem like a good idea. Why not test employees for taking drugs? After all, they are illegal.

Drug tests are not only problematic, but often prove to be inaccurate. Most of the techniques in testing used today regularly yield false positive results. Factors which may contribute to false positives include poppy seeds, weight loss pills, antibiotics, mouthwash, antidepressants, antihistamines and secondhand marijuana smoke. Not only this, but some tests searching for marijuana use in an individual often are unable to determine how long ago usage occurred, setting up students who may have given up usage months ago to fail. Tests with such high margins of error should not be used in professional settings, and certainly not when one’s status as a law-abiding citizen is at stake. In addition to this, many states in the United States now allow the usage of medical and recreational marijuana. For what reasons should drug tests hold laborers accountable for using legal substances in the privacy of one’s own home? What grants employers the right to randomly investigate the personal doings of an individual with no evidence pointing toward guilt? While some professions such as those in law enforcement and the medical field may justify random tests due to the risk of human life involved, random testing should be rendered unacceptable in fields where responsibilities are solely technical. Worse so, drug tests are unable to detect alcohol usage. This is considerably worrisome, considering alcohol’s status as the most commonly abused substance in the nation.

The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures, including requiring any search warrant to be sanctioned by a judge and upheld with probable cause. For this reason, the police are unable to approach your home, knock on your door, enter and rummage through your things looking for illegal contraband. The workplace should be no different. Mandating suspicionless drug tests violates the privacy of prospective employees and unnecessarily drags the private home life of an individual under the guise of an unwarranted authority, the employer. According to Sheila Gladstone and Ashley Thomas, of Lloyd Gosselink Rochelle & Townsend P.C., the United States Supreme Court has “created two exceptions to the requirement that all searches be conducted pursuant to a warrant: if (i) the government can show a ‘special need’ to conduct the drug test, or (ii) there is ‘reasonable suspicion’ of drug use,” meaning public sector jobs are protected by the amendment while private sector employers can randomly conduct drug tests without probable cause. While reasonable suspicion makes sense, as employers should be able to test employees if they appear high at work for example, the notion of “special need” is often exaggerated and abused by employers across the board. Any position which is deemed “safety-sensitive, high-security or involves the detection of illegal drugs” allows testing to be done “randomly, across-the-board or otherwise without individualized suspicion.” Therefore, menial office jobs and entry-level positions do not warrant this special need, and thus do not warrant unnecessary and random urine tests.

As clearly outlined by the Fourth Amendment, random drug tests remove a person’s right from unreasonable search and seizure. As argued by the ACLU, maintaining a policy of random drug tests for students and employees is “not an effective way of combating drug use” in schools and workplaces. “A drug test is not likely to catch most drug users. Alcohol and most drugs are virtually undetectable” unless the individual “is under the influence at the time the test is administered.” The policy may encourage laborers and students to use “more dangerous drugs to avoid detection. Because marijuana is the most easily detectable drug, students may use harder drugs or binge drink, creating greater health risks.” Drug testing arises from the remains of a generation of administrators and business employers who are overly anxious of the consequences of buzzword substances, such as marijuana. The imposition of drug testing grants employers a feeling of superiority and control over their workers, symptoms revealing a lack of trust and understanding between the two. Instead of administering tests to catch drug usage and fire employees, companies should strive to administer more positive drug-related standards, such as programs funding rehabilitation and medical aid. We must be able to move past the American-led notion that employers own their employees to such lengths that workers begin to lose a sense of privacy, control, choice and independence. Drug testing upholds the idea that one is guilty until proven innocent, breaching not only international human rights under the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but most jurisdictions around the globe.

David Hatami is a junior majoring in political science.