To Test or Not To Test

Even before I read about the massive education campaign in the government schools to examine bodily fluids, I knew that things had changed since I wore a cheerleader, band, and fifty million or so other hats at my Wilkes County government high school. A friend, who grew up with me, has her child in a neighboring North Carolina county high school. She and her A-student daughter have signed away the daughter's right to the privacy of her bodily fluid so that she can be a cheerleader, and fifty million or so other high school things, all of which we've been told are so important to our development as good citizens.

Mind you, my friend's daughter hasn't been tested yet, but the random threat is there. And from the high school scuttlebutt that I've been privy to, it's the ones who are the smartest, most dedicated, and least likely to mess with illegal drugs who are tested.  By the way, does anyone believe the random part? Does anyone really expect them to pull names out of a hat? It's probably only a matter of time for my friend's child, not that she has time to use drugs, with all her extracurricular activities. Nonetheless, the sword of drug-testing Damocles dangles over her golden locks.

I was so impressed by this supposed improvement to Leviathan's indoctrination system that I decided to sit this one out with my own children. If I can help it, they will not be going to government school; nor will they be subjected to having their bodily fluid examined for illegal substances. Perhaps I should be concerned about what's in my children's urine, but the government has no reason to be. Despite lame excuses to the contrary, the government has no business checking out my children's body fluids.

But what about me?  I was recently asked to work on a technical writing and editing job. I negotiated a flexible schedule so that I could work at home (read: at night and in the early morning hours, while everyone else is asleep). It was a writing job working with engineers. I like working with engineers, so much so that I married one, although now he is disguised as a technical writer himself.  Just before I received the offer, however, the recruiter told me he'd forgotten to say one thing – the company required a drug test. I've told them that I don't want to take it.

The recruiter sent me all the documents to fill out, the tax stuff, the stuff that says I'm a native American citizen, as if my Southern accent never gives that away, and other stuff, including a "Drug Free Workplace" form that I must sign, promising that I will not "illegally engage in the manufacture, distribution, dispensation, possession, or use of a controlled substance while at the workplace." I’ve gladly signed that document.

Let's face it, folks: If I were selling, or even taking drugs, legal or illegal, I sure wouldn't be planning to be 20 miles from my home every morning at 7:30 a.m. to meet with the project manager and the systems engineer. If I were selling drugs, well, I wouldn't be looking for a job, would I? Unless it was a cover. But really, I don't have the time to cover for selling drugs. I've got three sons under five; my husband and I barely had time to have champagne for our wedding anniversary this week. Why does anyone need to examine my bodily fluid?

Not that I particularly mind giving bodily fluids for a good cause. Last fall, I ended a little over nine months of pregnancy with the birth of an 11 lb. 1 oz. son; that included nine months of giving a urine sample each time I went to the doctor, to check for protein. This test, I didn't mind. If there had been a significant amount of protein in my urine, then the doctor would have known that something was wrong; he could have examined things further. It made sense for me and for my baby-to-be; and I took it voluntarily.  When my two older children asked me about it, I told them exactly why mommy had to pee into a cup.

I don't know what I would tell my children if I had to take them to the drug "screen," as the recruiter so euphemistically called it. I imagine this conversation with my four-year-old:

Well, mommy has to pee into a cup

Because you're pregnant?

No, not this time. Now, it’s because, well, because someone wants to hire me.

You're going to work as a person who pees in a cup?

Well, no, I'm going to write.

But mommy, you write already. Why do you need to pee in a cup to do that?

They want to make sure I'm not using illegal drugs.

What are illegal drugs, mommy?

They're drugs that aren't approved by pharmaceutical companies and Brooke Shields.

The logic of a four-year-old can be so much better than that of major corporations. How can I explain this drug test in a way that makes any sense to my child? Trying to explain the inane may indeed be why people lie to their children. At this point, I can't help but think of a wonderful man who responded to one of my articles by saying, "You're raising freedom-loving sons." Great! But do freedom-loving sons have a mommy who allows corporate America to search her body?

I could do the where does it stop argument at this point. And where does it stop? But I'll just leave that for you to ponder and I'll say that my husband was subjected to a drug test in his position with a U.S. Navy contractor. He filled me in on the Navy's attitude toward drug-testing. Because he was a civilian, he was allowed privacy to pee into his cup. Navy personnel – officers and enlisted – were not allowed this privacy. What this means is that if you're in the armed services, someone watches you pee.

What you do in your own private time should be your business, but I can tell you that whenever I've been in the bathroom with a friend, we've had this sort of unspoken deal where you don't watch each other pee. My four-year-old has become very private when it comes to ridding his body of wastes and I completely respect that. My thinking is that a little boy who wants a bit of privacy now and then may be better prepared to handle anyone he meets later on who wants to invade that privacy.

So that's my position on trying to raise some freedom-loving children: I don't think freedom-loving children, or adults, should have their urine checked just to see what's in it, whether by the government or by a corporation. But looking more deeply, the absurdity of this whole drug-testing thing is so clear. I'm guessing that the government schools are doing such a fabulous job of dumbing us down and of making us think that extracurricular activities are more important than freedom that most people don't even bother to question such an intrusion.

Thinking this one through, however, I see that the arguments that I thought were bogus in college are still bogus. I'm shocked that more people don't see through them. For one thing, just because you test negative today doesn't mean that you will tomorrow. One day after having a completely negative test, you can use as many drugs as possible. So much for the drug-free workplace in that scenario. Another thing is that the more dangerous illegal drugs are the ones that stay in one's system for the least amount of time. Marijuana, for example, can stay in there for a couple of months; cocaine, for a couple of days. And so, the test allows those who use more dangerous drugs to more easily defraud the test.

And of course, there's the big obvious point: Shouldn't workers be judged on what they can do instead of what's in their body? If someone has a drug problem, it will show up in their work and that person can be fired.

And what about the false positive? Companies use the most inexpensive tests possible and false positives happen; let's say they're 99% accurate, an estimate that I read. That sounds very good, but I think about it this way: That's the same failure rate as the pill supposedly has and yet I know at least two people who've gotten pregnant while on the pill, which brings me to another point: human failure. An acquaintance I met while in college worked at one of those major drug testing facilities – and she smoked marijuana!

Supposedly, a false positive can lead to another, more accurate test, but how's that going to figure into a mom's life? If you don't know that a Leviathan-sponsored child protection agency can receive an anonymous call about you, and your child can be taken away pretty quickly thereafter, you're living in the last century, and in the early part of it. That 1% chance of false positive can turn into a phone call to Leviathan from a drug tester, and a visit from a social worker. Easily. If you think I'm being paranoid, read this page.

I could go on and on, but I think I've given you enough to ponder here. Only when good and hard-working people stop succumbing to the silly and useless drug tests of the government and corporate world will employers stop asking us to submit to these tests. They have every right to ask us to acquiesce to their bodily fluid check; we have every right to refuse.

At this point, I don't know what the employer's going to decide. Two different recruiters had called me about this position and this company needs someone with my excellent technical writing and editing skills, and soon. We certainly need the money that this job would bring in, but even more, we need to teach our children about true freedom. It may be that this company loses out on someone who could help them have wonderfully-written technical documents, merely because they want my urine. If they want to do business with me, they need to accept the fact that when it comes to a drug test, I'll just say no.

October 18, 2005