Drug Testing My first topic paper is drug testing. Drug testing is used in all fields of work, from a fast food employee to a professional athlete. Is it morally right for companies to give their employees random drug tests? I think so.This could be considered an invasion of privacy, but it is necessary for companies to be sure that everyone in the company is clean and in a safe working environment.In the profession of sports athletes get suspended all of the time when they fail a drug test. The drug testing is absolutely great that the drug tests are given at random, that helps keep these employees clean and away from the source. If an employee refuses to take a drug test they should be fired. From a source that I have found 40% of young adults entering the work force have admitted to using drugs in the past year. One way to get that down is random drug testing. I think that employers have a moral right to a fair day?s work in exchange for a fair day?s pay. They also have a right to inquire into anything that seriously interferes with an employee rendering a fair day?s work. It is a well-known fact that drugs can significantly impair a person?s work performance, lowering productivity. In fact, drug and alcohol abuse cost employers nearly $100 billion in lost productivity each year. Employees who use drugs have double the rate of absenteeism, higher job turnover rates, and cost three times as much in terms of medical benefits as those who don?t use drugs, which is a very important and good reason for the rights of drug testing and make it completely right for the testing to happen. Society has a moral duty to protect the health and safety of its citizens.Drug abuse in the workplace is a dangerous hazard to oneself as well as others.Drug testing also can have a positive affect on people who fail the test. How so? Well for instance in the NBA this season, a player failed a random drug test for the 3rd time in 3 seasons. He was of course suspended and forced to go into a rehab clinic for a period of time. If this is used by companies it could bring out a positive outcome, because they would have the help they need, and given a second chance they may feel re-dedicated to the job and feel that they owe the company, with great results at work with the motivation.Of course there is always opposing sides to the problem. Critics of drug testing argue that the employees have a basic right to their own privacy, and what they do with their personal time is their own business and as long as it does not effect the company. They feel employers cannot intrude on this privacy without serious cause and a reasonable manner. Routine and random drug testing, they claim, clearly violate an employees right to privacy. Their are many reasons such as these programs, by nature, subject employees to humiliation and invade their routinely and randomly, not because not because there is reasonable suspicion of drug abuse. Drug testing is not an effective means for screening out employees whose on the job performance is being impaired by drugs. The results of drug testing only indicate that traces of a drug are affecting a person at work. In some cases, a drug used days earlier will still register on the test. Most of all, the results of drug tests are notoriously unreliable, a stated fact is that 1000 of every 100,000 samples taken will give erroneous results.Drug testing, then, presents us with a difficult moral issue in that how do respect an employers right to a productive and affective workplace, and at the same time protect our rights to privacy? The companies have a moral right to give these drug tests with the same right anyone should have for any rules or regulations. First of all, if people have a problem with the drug testing then they have a problem already, because if they refuse or are reluctant to take the test then you assume that they are hiding something and in fact are a drug addict. Second, if they don?t want to take the drug testing, let them get another job. It is all part of the job, like showing up on time, or doing your duties. You are getting paid for the job that you are doing, and the drug tests are a requirement just as any other test, such as a skills test, or an employee evaluation.Furthermore I believe that the drug tests are morally right because doing drugs is morally wrong so you can?t say the testing is wrong, that would make someone a hypocrite.As a former high school athlete I had to go through the random drug testing and I had no issue with the testing. Not to say that the testing had an effect on my choice to not do drugs, I think for some others it helped. It kept them away from that issue and crowd which helped them out in more than one way. So drug testing can actually have positive affects on people who would otherwise be in that sort of environment.Drug testing is not harmful or intrusive. My final opinion on this issue that drug testing is not morally wrong, because an employer of a company has every right to do what they will within that particular company, and if they want to issue out drug tests and people think that it is not ethically right they have no reason to work at that company and the company would probably be better off without those people anyway. My contention is that an employer is entitled to drug test on the grounds that the information derived is relevant to confirm the employee?s capacity to perform according to the terms of employment, and that such testing is a reasonable means of coming to know such information.
