I’m not one to support drug testing. Personally, I don’t think it is anyone’s business how you get your “thing” on in your off hours, whether you crunch numbers or work with heavy equipment.
But, I do have a couple of reasonable exceptions:
1 – Prisoners on probation and parole: You’ve already show us you can’t be trusted and we’re only letting you out early because we’re being kind (to both you and the taxpayer’s wallets). Don’t screw this up. Play it clean and after a set period of time you can get down with your bad self in any way you want.
2 – Recipients of government assistance: You’ve screwed up enough that your fellow citizens have to fund your existence. No “Party Hearty” for you until you can pay for it yourself.
3 – Government employees: Don’t want to take the whiz quiz? Don’t work for the government. I don’t mind you wasting your income, provided by me, on liquor, beer, wine, nicotine, caffene, guarana and whatever else it takes to twist your noggin. But the moment you have no regard for our laws against banned substances (stupid as some/most of them may be) you cease being able to morally enforce any of them. Sure, I mean LEO’s there. But I also mean the person who processes my property taxes, my Concealed Pistol License application and hands out welfare checks.
And I especially mean teachers. Which brings us to our QotD.
Hawaii and Missouri are in the middle of fighting for the ability to drug test teachers. And just like merit pay, the teacher’s unions are dead set against it.
Folks who go into teaching are not the kind who use drugs.
Michael Simpson – Assistant General Counsel for the National Education Association (NEA)
Bullshit and a half. While in high school, one of the Assistance Principals was fired for being busted with a rather decent sized quantity of cocaine. I know of four teachers in two districts and three separate school campuses who were only able to keep their jobs after being busted for pot because of the Washington version of the NEA.
Do I like the drug laws? Not really. Does a society have the responsibility to enforce the laws on the books? Yes.
The current half-assing of drug laws, such as Seattle making them a “lowest priority” offense, only does harm to respect for the laws themselves. If you can’t get a law removed from the books, then you have to enforce it.
That is THE law, which we are a nation of. Or were, until Men decided which laws they could ignore.
Uh, bro, hold on there a minute, willya?
I don’t see your testable list including folk who operate machinery that others’ lives could be in danger from.
That would include all sorts of non-government truck drivers, railroad train crews, airliner flight-deck crews, etc.
By MY lights, all these folks should be first in line, way ahead of convicts, teachers and the government hoi-palloi in desk jobs.
To me, intoxicant restriction is ALL about safety, nothing else. You can keep your social contract theory, which, BTW, sort of kills off your libertarianism, if’n ya kno what I mean, bro.
Teachers are 90% potheads, it’s the only way they can maintain the illusion of doing something.
” Hawaii and Missouri are in the middle of fighting for the ability to drug test teachers. And just like merit pay, the teacher’s unions are dead set against it.”
We are having the same battle here in West Virginia.The Teachers Union is dead set against it.
There is also a bill about to be introduced drug testing anyone on Public Assistance.The only thing in this bill I’m against is that those recently layed off from work will also fall under these guidelines.If you paid into Unemployment Benefits all your life and you are layed off,you are entitled to that assistance.
The unemployable who live for generations on the Goverment Dole should have to ‘whizz In A Bottle’.
Sorry RD, but a loader operator who smokes a little reefer on the weekend doesn’t fall into that category for me. I can see your case, but I don’t believe in it.
My experience, and this is with Teamsters, is that the co-workers of said drugged/drunk entity will, at the very least, tell said co-worker to go home sick for the day and then do a “UnionBrother Intervention”. Although I have seen them turn their “Brothers” into management for coming in loaded from the night before and refusing the easy way out (going home for the day).
As for my social contract theory, which I take to mean the handing out of welfare, we work with what we are given and take steps to remedy the situation. If you think that 100% monthly testing of welfare recipients won’t clear 50-60% of the rolls either through elimination because of drug use or them leaving to avoid the test, then you need to observe more low-lifes.
Phil- I do enjoy the blog on the occasions I visit but I gotta comment on this one. Use your search engine to look for studies done in the 1990’s in space and aviation medicine. Pilots in a simulator showed measurably reduced reaction times 24 hours after smoking dope. If it was that way almost 20 years ago I’d bet that with the stronger stuff available now the affects would be even longer-lasting. I went through this when on my local Board of Education years ago and you wouldn’t believe the resistance. Even the idea that a school bus driver that’d been crankin’ all weekend and might not be fit to drive on Monday wasn’t enough to warrant testing, according to some of the locals.
In either case, somebody still stoned or crashing from a speed run isn’t fit to operate machinery, whether you believe in that or not. Some one wants to stay stoned, wired, or drunk and not stir out of their abode, that’s one thing. Getting out in that condition around me and mine just ain’t acceptable. I think it’s something about your rights ending where my nose begins.
Rob J
Heh. Next he’ll be saying teachers aren’t the kind to have a drink over lunch. I don’t mind an argument against a law, but let’s keep it honest, shall we?
I’d agree with you both, but I’m afraid that the current round of mandatory/random UA’s isn’t really doing all that great of a job.
Unless you want to make it a criminal offense to show up to your bulldozer type job high, I don’t see them as being all that effective.
On that I could agree with you on, especially since I think a person’s first DUI should be a Gross Misdemeanor with a mandatory 6 month jail sentence, and move up to a Class C Felony on the second.
How’s that for a social Contract, RD?
Phil- I would have to say that if you drove high to get to your bulldozer job, your boss should fire your a$$. If you’d put yourself and the public at risk when you’re the only one liable, it indicates to me that you have no problem passing that liability along to him on his time. Granted he has deeper pockets, but if your idiocy put him out of business and me out of a job, I might be pretty pi$$ed.
When I tried to get drug testing instituted for bus drivers/mechanics in the local District, my idea was to have the sample split, and in case of a positive, the subject would have the option of having the other part of the sample checked or giving a new one. Still got nowhere. The driver/mechanic’s rights end when my (or anybody else’s kid) gets on the bus or that bus is on the road for any reason.
Had a guy runnin’ an industrial tree chipper at my place. He’s tellin’ me that he does a Vicodin and tokes up every morning before he works. He was not invited back to work around me and mine, and I know that he’s not on the road coming to work at my place. Just hope he doesn’t hurt anybody going to work someplace else.
Rob J