Drug Testing

Third, since employees know when they accept certain jobs that they will be tested, then they will be searched only after appropriate warning. In this sense tests are not unconstitutional searches under the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. However, even if the fourth amendment is not violated by drug testing, that does not establish that testing is morally or legally permissible. There are moral limits on an employer's discretion: no employer should be able to control the private lives of her employees. These moral limits are also Constitutional limits. In particular, the Constitution's protection of privacy is sufficient to throw the use of mandatory testing in doubt. The courts held that specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights protect privacy. For example the first amendment states that privacy is protected from governmental intrusion. It is the right to be left alone one of the most valued by civilized men. In light of the constitutionally recognized right to privacy, more is at issue than whether mandatory drug tests are illegal searches under the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. Even if drug tests are not impermissible searches, they are, at least at first glance, invasions of privacy that could merit protection. Therefore, we must still determine whether employers can require employees to take drug tests which intrude into employee's private lives. .
             As I stated earlier baseball has been in the spotlight lately as far as drug testing goes. In the last decade multiple hitting records have been broken by players who have been under suspicion of using steroids. Baseball great Cal Ripken Jr. said "Someone has to be using steroids because no body has ever done anything like this before and with all the great names before us those records just don't get broken." Of course almost every single one baseball players accused of taking steroids denies it. A San Francisco Chronicle report in February claimed that Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi, Gary Sheffield and other professional athletes received steroids from BALCO, a San Francisco-area nutritional supplements lab that is under federal investigation.