Are There Holes In The DOT Drug Testing Program...

Or Are You Getting Your Money's Worth?


The Subcommittee on Highways and Transit met on November 1, 2007 and reviewed testimony related to vulnerabilities in the Drug and Alcohol Testing programs administered by motor carriers. A number of incidents prompted the Subcommittee to direct the General Accountability Office (GAO) to conduct an in-depth review of conditions at facilities that perform urine specimen collections for drug tests regulated by the Department of Transportation (DOT).

On February 19, 2007, Fox News report aired in Minneapolis, MN indicating problems in four out of five collection facilities, which afforded employees opportunities to cheat or circumvent the urine specimen collection process. Another important figure released was a recent Oregon State Police report that showed an 8.9% positive rate on their most recent roadside Operation Trucker Check. The DOT estimation of the positive drug rate is 1.7%.

To make matters worse, in 2005 GAO testified before Congress that approximately 400 products were available on the market specifically designed to beat a drug test. The lack of consistent and secure procedures in the collection facilities only seems to contribute to the Congressional concern about the effectiveness of the drug testing program.

There are a number of ways to look at these contradictory data, but suffice it to say, not all collection problems are of such nature that they would increase the possibility of someone cheating on a drug test. In fact, the high percent of positive results in the Oregon report includes the detection of prescription drugs (which DOT does not test for) and does not include potential “down grades” to negative results by a medical review officer.

So, is the program successful and are you getting your money’s worth?
You bet the program is working! Quest Diagnostics, one of the larger Health and Human Services certified drug testing laboratories, publishes a Drug Testing Index which shows a dramatic decrease in drug positive rates from 1988 to 2006: 13.6% versus 3.8% for more than 9 million tests in 2006. A breakout for Federal and DOT results indicates a positive rate for of 2.0% for 2006. You can check this out on their web site at: http://www.questdiagnostics.com/employersolutions/dti/2007_03/dti_index.html.
Drug testing in general has decreased drug usage by individuals in safety-sensitive jobs (e.g., drivers). Therefore, how could an employer increase the likelihood that a drug program will be successful?

First of all, as an employer, you have little impact on what happens at the collection site. You have to assume that the staff conducting the collections has been properly trained and are aware of procedures that hey have to use. Of course, one major problem is that urine specimen collection generally is not a clinic’s primary function and it may not receive the attention it deserves.

Lesson #1
There is nothing wrong with periodically asking one of your employees who went through the collection process to describe to you what the procedures were like or to specifically tell you if there were any actions which may have appeared as inappropriate. Of course, you have to take these second hand reports with a grain of salt, but if you hear the same potential problem from two or three of your employees, you need to take action. This could be as simple as calling the collection site and asking them what their procedure is in that particular area. (We have to assume that as an employer, you have some knowledge of what constitutes a proper collection.) If you use a third party administrator (TPA), you should pass your concerns on to them for resolution. The TPA can visit the collection site, can review their procedures, and can correct any deviations.

Lesson #2
Devote some time and thought is to your drug and alcohol policy and what it states in reference to certain procedures. For example, how much notice do you give to applicants about when they are to go for a drug test? By the way, this is really an IQ test; if you tell an applicant to take a drug test three days from now and they come back positive, not only do you not want to hire them because they are using drugs, but they are also not very smart!

Your procedure should give applicants minimal notice of when a drug test will be conducted and the process should not be predictable. The same goes for your current employees. When you tell one of them to take a drug test, what is the time span for arrival at the collection site? Do they have the whole day during which they can go to the clinic? In other words, if you tell an employee in the morning to go sometimes that day to the clinic for a drug test, that individual has all day to try and obtain some adulterants, a prosthetic device, clean urine, etc. At this point, you have just wasted your money on a drug program that will not be effective.

Your policy should state that the employee has a specific time to get to the collection site (based on travel distance, etc.) and that the only exceptions would be documented problems, such as an auto accident, emergency room visit, or abduction by space aliens. Arrival after that time is considered refusal to test. Make it plain and simple.

Some employers make a glaring mistake when they identify an employee who is acting in such a way that a reasonable suspicion test is required. (Same goes for post-accident testing.) They either tell the employee to go on his/her own to the collection site or they tell the employee to finish working and then go to the collection site. In either case, the employer is risking potential legal liability. All you need is a subsequent accident on the job or on the way to the collection site and you are up to your armpits in litigation. Bottom line: if you think a reasonable suspicion test is required, take the employee yourself to the collection site or have a collector come to the work-site.

On-Site Collection
Every employer should seriously consider having the urine specimen collection conducted at the job site. Many TPAs train and employee individuals who can conduct urine specimen collections and breath alcohol tests outside a clinic environment, right on the jobsite. This prevents the employees being tested from having any opportunity to obtain adulterants, clean their urine, or develop excuses for why they could not make it to the clinic. Additionally, the cost of an on-site collection may not be as expensive as it may appear initially. Don’t forget to factor in the cost related to having two or three employees on the clock, but not working while they go to a clinic for a drug test. If the average salary is $30.00 per hour and the round trip to the clinic plus the time spent providing the sample averages out to three hours; three employees taking a drug test will cost you $270.00 in non-productive work time. On-site testing could bring that down by a third.

Getting back to the GAO and the Oregon State Police data; what does it indicate? There is some difference between the Oregon data and what DOT and Quest Diagnostics are reporting. There probably are some problems at collection sites and there are employees who will try to subvert the system. You can’t catch everyone who is trying to cheat, but you can certainly make it a lot harder. Will these few simple actions on your part improve the actual urine specimen collection process? Probably not significantly, but it may decrease the ability of certain individuals to “plan” on how to overcome a drug test. It is important that you don’t give them that extra time and opportunity when you notify them about an upcoming test. A little effort on your part will save you money in the long run.

About the Author
Don Shatinsky Former Senior Drug and Alcohol Policy Advisor at DOT, one of the authors of the Federal drug/alcohol testing regulations (49 CFR Part 40), and now a consultant in the drug testing field and a Regional Representative for Concorde, Inc. The opinions expressed in this Blog are for educational and informational purposes only. Any personnel or legal actions should be based on the actual rule text.