Work drug testing challenged

A prominent festival drug testing advocate has drawn parallels between the derailed meth house testing industry and the workplace drug testing industry, which she says suffers from a similar lack of evidence.

Yesterday, Wendy Allison, the director of drug testing group KnowYourStuff, tweeted: ‘‘Anyone who’s outraged about the methamphetamine contamination scam should probably also look at the lack of evidence supporting workplace drug testing.’’

Allison said much of the research backing workplace drug testing was out of date or based on findings for alcohol only, and claims about workplace testing needed to be critically explored.

‘‘The bottom line is, does it improve workplace safety and, if not, why are we continuing to allow it?’’

New Zealand Drug Foundation executive director Ross Bell has been sounding alarm bells over the merit of meth testing standards for years.

He agreed in principle with Allison and said the drug testing industry was preying on employers’ needs for a simple, silver bullet that did not exist and did not work.

‘‘People always want to fix a complex problem with something simple,’’ Bell said.

A report released this week by the prime minister’s chief science adviser, Peter Gluckman, showed there was no real risk to humans from third-hand exposure to houses where methamphetamine had been consumed.

Bell said the parallel between the meth and drug testing industries was they both leveraged the fears of employers, landlords and authorities to create business.

Another danger was that preemployment drug testing, random testing and testing on suspicion or after an incident or accident was steadily creeping beyond safety-critical industries.

The Supreme Court has said employers can require workers to take drug tests if they work in ‘‘safety-sensitive’’ work, including jobs in transport, labouring, primary industries (such as forestry, fishing or farming), and even education.

Employment lawyer Susan Hornsby-Geluk said the idea that employers were being taken for a ride by drug testing companies was ‘‘far-fetched’’.

‘‘That’s completely wrong. There’s a relatively high threshold for which companies can actually undertake random drug testing. There does have to be real health and safety issues so employers don’t, and can’t do, random testing unless there is a good reason.

‘‘Either employees will have that in their contact or there will be a [workplace] policy.’’

However, Bell said changing the culture around workplace impairment was the only real solution to what was a real problem.

‘‘Drug testing is not going to create a safer working environ- ment and can create an atmosphere of mistrust.’’

Bell did not think the time was right for an official inquiry into workplace drug testing but said the lesson from the meth house testing debacle was that the Ministry of Health took too long to react.

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (Mbie) needed to ensure there was good advice on drug testing in the workplace.