Beating drug tests

Press, 13 December 1989, Page 20

Beating drug tests

From a correspondent in New York for the “Economist”

THE entrepeneurial spirit is alive and well. From the land of the “fuzz buster” (a dashboard device that warns drivers of police speed-traps ahead) comes a new wonder: drug-free urine. An enterprising Texan who calls himself Jeff Nightbyrd is selling powdered urine from his Byrd Laboratory in Austin. Lured by the slogan “Pee for pleasure, not for employment,” punters receive two vials and accompanying instructions for $19.95. A growing number of firms and Government agencies are putting their employees through drug tests. A study by the Bureau of Labour Statistics reveals that last year 20 per cent of the companies sampled were testing either their existing staff or people applying Tor jobs; in 1984

the figure was 3 per cent. New York is the latest city to launch a random-testing programme. Mayor Ed Koch, active to the end, has just signed an order making employees in 53 safetyrelated jobs liable to tests. Mr Nightbyrd says that there is a serious purpose to his merchandise. Apart from the’ infringement of civil liberties, he argues that the tests are unreliable and that, when the initial screening gives positive results, these are false in 15-20 per cent of cases. Guidelines issued by the National Institute for Drug Abuse say that any “presumptive positive” test from a first screening should be confirmed by ai second test. But many companies do not bother to commission the second

(more expensive) test.

Drug-free urine began in 1986 as a political joke: a small newspaper advertisement offering a non-existent product as a protest against testing. But orders began to arrive, from potsmokers who did not want to stop, and from people changing their jobs and worried about the reliability of the tests.

To begin with Mr Nightbyrd turned to elderly church-goers for his supplies, but soon had to switch to a manufactured alternative. It was not a question of reliability or insufficiency but of quality: the pensioners’ urine was so full of legitimate drugs that it often tested positive.

©The Economist