The Legal Issues of Drug Testing

The legal issues of drug testing can be classified into six sections:

• Drug Testing Issue Identification: Some event, person, or group calls attention to a problem that needs government action.
• Drug Testing Agenda Setting: The issue or problem is seriously considered by the policymaking institution.
• Drug Testing Policy Formation: Someone must develop a proposal or program that can address the issue.
• Drug Testing Policy Adoption: Includes efforts to obtain enough support so that a proposal can become the government’s stated policy.
• Drug Testing Policy Implementation: The carrying out of policy mandates through public programs and actions.
• Drug Testing Policy Evaluation: Looking at government actions and programs to see whether goals have been achieved to assess a policy’s effectiveness and efficiency.

We are still at the first stage of the drug testing legal issue identification. Most people are not even aware of the drug testing issue facing us today. Some still believe that drug testing detects impairment, and few are aware of the better alternatives. One might ask why the Constitution has not legally protected individuals from privacy invasion by way of drug testing to begin with.

Well, drug testing is an unreasonable search, and it forces people to incriminate themselves. However, the Constitution does not apply to private organizations with respect to legal grounds. This means when an employer searches someone unreasonably by mandating drug testing, the government doesn’t have to provide Constitutional protection.

The legal implications of drug testing reportedly are limited in scope, and only come into play via protection under civil litigation.

See Additional References: Work Place Drug Testing