Employer Drug Screening

The country's largest drug testing company, Quest Diagnostics Inc., reports that their data indicate a troubling rise in methamphetamine usage among job applicants and randomly-tested workers.

The report - tallying the results of more than 7 million workplace drug tests performed last year by Teterboro, N.J.-based Quest - shows the methamphetamine positive rate jumped, along with a smaller rise in positives for opiates like heroin, even as the overall number of workers failing tests stayed nearly unchanged at 4.5 percent.

However,

The number of workers and job candidates testing positive for methamphetamine remains small compared to marijuana, by far the biggest reason that people fail employer drug screenings, the Quest figures show. About 3 of every 1,000 workers now test positive for meth, compared to about 3 of every 100 workers testing positive for marijuana.

Based upon these results, it seems the rallying cry for the drug legalization crowd should be "Get high, not hired!"