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- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - page 2 of 2 Slate's Michael Kinsley recently skewered the hypocrisy of the New York Times editorial page for criticizing the state of Georgia's recent attempt to compel political candidates to undergo drug testing, while staying quiet about the Times' own pre-employment drug screening policy. Such glaring contradictions between newspapers' editorial stances and corporate practices reinforce the image of a pathetically spineless and hypocritical press: willing to take others to task while ignoring its own stern counsel. Little wonder then that many of the reporters and editors I contacted declined to comment on their experience on or off the record. Don't get me wrong -- if I truly needed (or even desperately wanted) a job, I might sacrifice my uric acid and my Fourth Amendment rights to the cause. But to do it and then be afraid to even talk about it? Journalists make their livings by asking -- and sometimes hounding -- others to stand up for their rights and reveal their secrets. But when it comes to their own companies' piss policies, journalists' lips are zipped. "I completely caved on the issue," admitted Jim DeRogatis, Chicago Sun-Times rock critic and one of the few journalists brave enough to discuss his experience with pre-employment drug testing. "I'm totally against it, but did I piss in the cup for them? You betcha." When DeRogatis first heard about the drug test, he wondered if the Sun-Times editors were testing the depth of his professional commitment. "Since I'd written a book about psychedelic drugs and rock music, I thought they would only hire me if I failed the test," he joked. He had "no reason to worry" the first time he took the test (he was hired by the newspaper twice), but "just in case" he drank a special detoxifying tea from the health food store. "It turned me green," DeRogatis told me, explaining that his candor stems in part from his assumption that the Sun-Times only cares about drug testing insofar as it affects the paper's insurance rates. "If there wasn't a tea, I suppose a lot more people would object to the testing," he said. "But as it is, it's more of a formality." A New York Times reporter who agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity recalled his pre-employment whiz quiz. He thought a colleague was joking when he told him to start "studying for your drug test." Then his prospective boss sat him down, told him how wonderful it was to work for the Times and added ominously: "If you fail the drug test, you can never work here as long as you live." Unexpectedly hired a month early, the reporter found an excuse to bow out of the first physical to let his system go clean, but a week later went in for his test. "You have to take off your clothes, then this nurse follows you into the bathroom and unscrews the handles of the sink so you can't dilute your urine. Then she stood outside the stall listening to me," he said. "It was oddly paramilitary. "It's pretty mind-boggling," he added. "Because there's absolutely no relationship between me smoking marijuana on the weekend and my job performance." Like DeRogatis, the Times reporter also believes the paper's policy stems from insurance company requirements. Many states have a "drug-free workplace program" that allows participating employers to get a 5 percent break on their workers' compensation insurance. This sounds relatively harmless, but there's a kicker. If a journalist was injured, say, while covering a riot at the World Cup, he would immediately be drug tested. If the pot he smoked six weeks earlier showed up on his urine test, he would lose his workers' compensation coverage and medical benefits. While they tend to cower in silence, many journalists privately complain that the pass-fail drug test is absurd at best and fascist at worst. But Donald Lewis, president of Foley Laboratory Services in Connecticut, one of the country's largest drug testing companies, strongly disagrees. "I'd rather hire an alcoholic than an occasional marijuana smoker," he told me, explaining that he learned his lesson with a pot-smoking employee at his very own company. "He was rear-ended, then he was broad-sided, and then he ate a two-week old pizza in the back of his car and had to have his stomach pumped. I've seen how drugs can destroy a workplace." Lewis estimates that drug testing is a $2 billion to $3 billion annual business. His industry's meteoric growth in the past decade is a testament to the political and rhetorical success of the nation's "drug war" -- a war that has now conscripted most newsrooms in America. "The deeper issue here is that the media has been enlisted as soldiers in the drug war," said Jeff Cohen, executive director of the liberal media watchdog group, Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting. "No one ever says anymore that the drug war is itself a controversy with legitimate points of view on both sides." Indeed, the drug war has seeped into the fabric of our everyday lives, and even journalists who do still fight for their First Amendment free speech rights have quietly surrendered other rights. But what good is free speech, if the only way you have access to it is by forfeiting your right to privacy? Granted, when the Founding Fathers wrote the statute protecting unwarranted searches and seizures, they probably were thinking grain silos, not bladders -- but can there even be an argument about which one is the more private place? And the drug testing craze may be only the beginning of aggressive workplace intrusions. In response to criticism that urine tests are inaccurate, companies are eagerly inventing new, more precisely intrusive products. Psychemedics Corp. in Boston holds the patent for a drug test in which a swath of hair roughly the size of a crayon can detect drugs taken 90 days before the test. If the person is bald, he must submit body hair. CERA, a Florida testing company, has developed the Substance Abuse Subtle Screening Inventory, a psychological test involving sophisticated questions designed to ferret out liars and defensive thinking. Some companies have even begun using tests meant for mental patients that delve into the sexual feelings and religious beliefs of the potential employee. When these perfected drug tests begin to screen for psychological eccentricity, independent thinking, hereditary diseases and political persuasions, then we will need the power of the press more than ever. The question is, will we have journalists with backbones enough for the job?
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Should journalists fight against workplace drug testing? Join the pissing match in Table Talk. |
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