I'm not a museum employee, just a former professor who used to lecture the
med students at Mt. Sinai in New York about opiates, now in publishing.  I
follow this group out of an interest in museums.  As a researcher in the area
of addiction, I know illegal drugs, and I have to weigh in on this.  First
people who think they can tell who is on drugs and who is not are wrong.  You
could work side by side with a heroin addict receiving methadone every
morning and not know it.  Furthermore, that person could perform his job
perfectly well.  This is a medical fact.  Just as it is a medical fact that
opiates used to relieve pain do not cause addiction.
Second, I find it strange that is is my generation (I'm 48) demanding this of
our employees when almost all of us at least tried marijuana during our
college years, and probably half went through some time when we were using it
regularly.  Yet we performed perfectly well in our classes (and I include
graduate school, because I know what went on with my fellow grad students)
and went on to lead useful productive lives.  The lives and careers of some
of the highest contributing members of our generation would have been stunted
or cut short if we had been subject to such tests.  I find it hypocrisy.

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