Surveys were conducted between 1985 and 1991 showing the percentage increase of companies practicing drug testing as a standard for employment went from 18% to 40% in just that 6 year time frame. Most of those were from companies with employees in the hundreds. The larger the company the more likely you are to be tested. This seems to be the general consensus on this issue. There are a few court systems that have put specific restrictions on testing, claiming it to be a violation of privacy to test an employee with a reasonable suspicion of drug use on the employee’s behalf.

In today’s economy with jobs becoming even harder to come by it is important that we as the public take as many precautions as we can to ensure our employment. Drug testing will not be going away any time soon it seems, especially not with drug testing being now federally mandated as a common practice for companies and employers.  It is not as though these companies are making the decisions themselves to test their employees, more and more people are becoming aware of the facts surrounding drug testing and actual accidents in the workplace that can be directly linked to an employee’s drug use. The Drug Free Workplace Act of 1998 actually provided small incentives to employers to create a Drug Testing policy for their companies, this was especially beneficial to smaller companies with fewer employees who could use all the tax breaks they could get and won’t have to be out a lot of money to test a small number of employees.