"On the other hand, drugs are illegal. ....  It
is no invasion of privacy or body to verify that employees are not potential
jail bait.

Here in California, Marijuana use and posession is an infraction, punishable
by no more than a small fine. It is a less serious crime than reckless
driving, exhibition of speed, or numerous other petty misdemeanors.
Additionally, its latency in the body is much longer than many more serious
drugs, eliciting positive results months after last usage.

It is completely absurd that such a minor violation of law should carry
serious employment consequences. There is no way smoking marijuana once
every few months will affect anyone's job performance, mental health, or
incarceration status. These discussions gather together a whole suite of
substances together as "illegal drugs" and then attempt to make generalized
conclusions about drug use. The whole debate is thereby so flawed, that it
can never achieve any sort of consensus or rationality.

If there reslly is a burning social issue, it  is not drug use, but
substance abuse. Be that substance marijuana, alcohol, kava or toulene, no
random drug test can possibly have any reasonable sucess at revealing
individuals with serious problems of abuse.

We all know that the vast majority of people who are worried about this
pheomena, and who are singled out by it  are casual recreational users of
marijauna. Not heroin addicts or crack heads. Nobody wants to stand up and
be counted as a "druggie", so the discussion always focuses on other things.

"Drug testing, whether random or entrance, is a knee-jerk reaction to this
hysteria. It is a cowardly attempt by organisations to have an appearence of
being squeaky-clean rather than engage reasonable management practices."

Exactly!
 I'd also say that I wonder if it isn't a factor in the "culture wars" so
often discussed by religious conservatives. They know that todays liberal
and progressive movements are offsprings of the counter culture phenomenon,
and that there is a signifigantly higher use of "illegal drugs" among that
population. By connecting violent crime with drug use, then lumping the
innocuous ritual of "sharing a joint" in as illegal drug use, they
effectively cow many liberal thinkers, who, if not themselves, then
certainly thier colleagues, occasionally participate in such rituals.

In my opinion most of the debate is completely disingenuous.

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