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Recent increases in the use of illegal drugs and problems related to that use have raised a variety of public health and safety concerns. These concerns have led many to propose drug testing as one of the best ways to combat the proliferation of drug use.
Although concerns exist, many view the public safety threat serious enough to override any individual privacy interests. Public opinion polls indicate that there is widespread support for a variety of testing programs, even those that are random and mandatory. Although drug abuse should not be tolerated in the workplace, consideration must be taken to limit the extent to which drug testing intrudes on employees" privacy. .
Many employees feel that implementing a drug-testing program will cause a lack of trust between the employer and employee and that it will also lower employee morale and effectiveness while on the job. Opponents of drug testing also focus on the limitations of the testing procedures, arguing that the tests are highly inaccurate. One worry is the sensitivity of the tests. Many types of tests procedures are inaccurate, innocent parties will be harmed because most tests produce a large number of false positive results, indicating that there has been drug use when there has actually been none. .
The first two cases on drug testing to reach the Supreme Court were argued in 1988. From the decisions issued the following year, it is clear that the court held that urine tests are a significant intrusion into a fundamentally private domain. Afterwards, every court that addressed the issue found that urinalysis and blood tests intrude on privacy as a search and seizure forbidden under the fourth amendment. Courts mainly focused on the privacy invasion involved, first, in the process of urination and the method in which the specimen is obtained, and second, in the individual interest and safeguarding the confidentiality of the information contained in the sample.
