A growing number of companies are eliminating workplace drug testing to attract and retain workers amid a global labor shortage […] Vice reported last month that 9% of more than 45,000 employers worldwide are eliminating job screenings or drug tests as an incentive to “attract and retain in-demand talent,†according to a recent study conducted by staffing firm ManpowerGroup. That equates to around 4,050 employers, in 43 countries, that are no longer disciplining or dismissing employees for recreational drug use.
It’s about time.
“Mandatory drug testing isn’t based on suspicion or unprofessional behavior,†says Aamra Ahmad, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. “But a positive test can still cost the person their job, even if the use was legal, or for a medical purpose, or took place days or weeks earlier and doesn’t actually impact job performance.â€
Of course, we’ve been saying that here for years. And the really good companies realized that and haven’t been drug testing. But way too many fell for the unsupported hype (and outright lies) that drug testing gets you better employees. More often, a company policy of drug testing was a sign of a lack of competent personnel management within the company.
This is great news for workers who’ve been able or forced to take on additional burdens during the pandemic. And it’s good to see the drug testing industry take a financial hit.
Drug regulations and employee health insurance systems have always been rigged in ways to keep people repressed, desperate, miserable, and clinging to low paying jobs in an increasingly unequal society. People under duress are believed by regulators to be easier to control and manipulate in terms of tastes and desires, until they aren’t, like when they revolt against drug laws by smoking weed.
Regulation itself has a sordid history of failure:
The situation Chomsky describes accurately depicts the regulatory relationship between Big Pharma and the FDA.
Someone reported me for toking up during break outside at my job, which is a ‘Saftey Sinsite’ job. And two days later, they pulled an emergency drug and alcohol test on me, even though I have a medical card. So, I had to resign so I wouldn’t be fired and lose out on pay. Of course, this facility I worked at, which is a Nursing Home for old veterans (38yrs-102yrs of age) and I’ve got a rock-solid history of being that guy who is never late or misses and when the snowstorm kept all in my crew from showing up, I was there by myself for three days. And it was a messy job (laundry) and even being a Veteran with a college degree and a solid history of good performance characterized as ‘going beyond’ at that place and others, they never allowed me to move to another position, giving it to others who would quit, not show up, be late. But when they turned me down for the last position I applied for, I went coo-coo and started to vape on Saturdays (my Friday), and then right after we lost Afghanistan just recently, I started to smoke flower in my car. Mind you, my mom died one year to the date of the capital insurrection so Covid 2020 sucked extra balls. Then again, they turned me down two jobs in a row not even two months before my mom died so she never saw her son get a good job. My first post-college/military job was being a youth instructor at a military-style facility for troubled kids and my top boss at this state ran facility (voluntary for kids)–who would later go on stabbing a chiropractor multiple times on the 19th of April 2016 (he’s in prison now), forced me to resign based on allegations he created so he could ’emergency hire his buddy, who at one time worked at the same place I was. So, my mom died knowing I never got that job . . . even after I spent the last of my GI Bill on welding school, to find out the blind weld better than me. The State even acknowledge the fact this former high-ranking worker had done dirty bad rotten things–a lot of them, while he was in charge and even admitted that he possibly harmed the legal records and reputations of those who fought him.
I simply just didn’t care about toking or not because the job was dirty, lousy, a dead-end, humiliating, and couldn’t leave because I’m a vet taking care of vets who need me and see eye to eye with me on different levels, plus the benefits were excellent. But when we lost the Stan in that way, I just toked up where ever outside, and even did it in a way to show people “I’m Pissed”. Everyone knew I was a vet (like 3-5 vet workers and over 260 civilians) and many on the inside tried to get me better positions, but Admin wouldn’t have it. Having a BA and being a Vet with a Clean Piss gets you no job.
And less than three hours before toking up, I got a job at Amazon since they only give you a few hours notice to let you know if you are going to ‘hiring process’ that day.
Always enjoy reading your comments and learning about your history. Good luck at Amazon.
Thank’s NorCal. One of the first customer items I checked was a Doors CD. And speaking of 60’s music: do you recall ‘Robbert Kennedy’s version of ‘Wild Thing’ done by a comedian in 67′? And American Horror has a new series about the Rosswell aliens and how they negotiated with the White House, took control and had America invade Vietnam as a Distraction from thousands of missing Americans, and the men in black killed Marilyn and Kennedy when they found out.
And here is another PISS Positive Note, but a bit OT:
“Excelsior Overshot”, by MC Marshall my novel is now out via Kindel for $4.00. And the reason I only will have the Kindel Option is I don’t use Trees until Hemp is readily used for paper and books. It’s not a short read for the price at just over 107,600 words. The cover design is a blue triangular lighting of a boy and girl facing each other and almost touching palms and fingers.
It has Drug Cartels in it, Jesse James the outlaw standing on where Fort Lenoard Wood would be, stolen rare expensive baseball cards, Stephen Hawking, The Hadron Collider being built in reverse, Professor Einstein commenting on having pizza, bizarre blueprints found in some dope and weapons filled Taliban/Al Qaeda cave in Afghanistan shortly after 9/11, the Iraq War, Love, Death, Trauma, PTSD, an invention that can let you listen to anything anyone ever said and any sound ever made, like a tree falling in a forest 900,000 years ago . . . and people want this thing and are willing to do anything to get their hands on anything that lets them hear anything you or anyone ever said like your secretes, combinations, passwords, private talks with your doctor, recipes, sports/stock strategy, politics, the talk of generals, rebels plotting, the cartel’s competition . . . and it can save the life of a young Cherokee woman right after a bad car crash in the middle of the sticks away from zero witnesses to save her etc. And it is a subtle protest of the War on Drugs and how it fucked up Iraq and Afghanistan and how Mexico was our Nearby Witness of how the War on Terror would play out.
New anti-marijuana propaganda is emerging from Boston and British Columbia that conflates marijuana with alcohol use by drivers. Guilt by association with alcohol and random statistics are being used to link marijuana to traffic deaths. Will smartphones be the next to be linked? Probably not.
JAMA Health Forum publication boosts support for cannabis law reform involving racial disparities in arrests. Abstract:
On both points: Come to Oklahoma and you can breathe into a machine that says “Dude–like you smoked almost four hours ago, you gotta be high”. I’ve heard the threshold is four hours, but I don’t feel much after an hour and 15 minutes and that after dabs, RSO, Flower, THC Diamonds, and hash combined into a single pipe. Plus your mom and pop but tenders give you goodies, cookies, fudge, samples and the big guys will give you like 5-12 grams of dabs/diamonds/hash/vapes for a hundred bucks plus tax . . . $99 OZ of the quality stuff (not the gas-powered stuff) and $30 OZ of the stuff that made you wish you coughed up the additional $69 bucks instead of coughing on 4 bongs bowls just to get there.
And Racism Lost Us Afghanistan–technically speaking–legally speaking . . . why did dope and flower become illegal back in the day? What was the driving mechanism behind bigger ulterior reasons–the master behind the curtain. Who pays for the bulk of the U.N. Singles Law Tax to keep the beast Fed yearly? We can force others to play, but making others pay is an entirely different matter, like blood out of a turnip. So, because our National Law electrifies our International Laws, created out of hatred, fear, misunderstanding, greed, stereotypes, etc, America’s Racism or Ansliger Lost the War.
Harry J Anslinger Lost the War. Michele Leonhart lost us the War. Karen Tandy Lost Us the War. Nora Volkow Lost us the War. Asa Hutchinson Lost us the War. Glen R Hanson Lost us the War. Nixon Lost us the War. The Cop who choked out Geroge Floyd and the officers who stood around doing nothing Lost the WAR. Hillary Clinton’s Super Predator ideology lost Us the War. All the cops who shot first or were too aggressive lost us the War. Oliver North–the Bush’s and Reagan Lost us the War . . . Anne Milgram Will Lose for us, Iraq.
That’s the best thing about opposing the drug war. You don’t have to do much beyond revealing the main players who make a total wreck out of everything. Their prohibitionist behaviors and legal methods defeat them, while I just sit back, take a hit, and watch the action in total amazement.
A pharmaceutical company has determined an optimum dosage for a psilocybin pill:
Fighting stroke and dementia with 3-5 cups of tea per day or 4-6 cups of coffee:
That’s great news for me!
Wear your nalaxone in a handy self-injecting device, according to inventors who developed a “wearable device [that] can detect and reverse opioid overdose…”:
But there’s a fly in the ointment known as Big Pharma (BP):
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/oct/19/naloxone-price-soars-opioid-overdoses
Citizen science makes it more convenient to study the effects of psilocybin on depression, anxiety, and stress:
Psychedelics alleviate major depression and anxiety disorders: