Results of Poll on Drug & Alcohol Testing Policies

Most safety professionals agree that workers who are under the influence of drugs or alcohol on the job are a danger to both themselves and others. But that doesn’t mean all workplaces test workers for these substances.

In fact, when we recently asked readers what your company policy was on drug/alcohol testing, nearly half (49%) said that they don’t currently conduct drug/alcohol tests and don’t intend to start. Other results:

  • 36% conduct for cause/post-incident drug and/or alcohol tests.
  • 7% don’t currently conduct drug/alcohol tests but plan to do so.
  • 4% conduct random drug and/or alcohol tests.
  • 4% conduct both random and for cause/post incident tests.

For those employers planning to implement a drug and alcohol testing program, the rules just got harder in the wake of the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Irving Pulp on the legality of a random alcohol testing program.

To learn more about this key decision as well as another case in which an employer’s testing program was upheld, review the slides from our recent webinar on this topic and read the decisions in these and related cases. (Due to a technical error, there’s no recording of the webinar available. But we’ll be holding the webinar again this fall.)

You should also download our special report on the current state of drug and alcohol testing in Canada.

And OHS Insider has: