Wall Street Journal article highlights growing positive drug tests as a challenge for employers
Today’s Wall Street Journal ran an interesting article that highlights the growing challenge employers face trying to hire drug-free in light of a 2-decade high surge in positive drug test results in 2021.
Of the more than six million general workforce urine tests that Quest Diagnostics Inc., one of the country’s largest drug-testing laboratories, screened for marijuana last year, 3.9% came back positive, an increase of more than 8% from 2020, according to Quest’s annual drug-testing index.
That figure is up 50% since 2017. Since then, the number of states that legalized marijuana for recreational use grew to 18 from eight, plus the District of Columbia.
Faced with general hiring pressure, this has, according to the Wall Street Journal, caused an increasing number of employers to begin to permit carveouts for positives at least related to marijuana use in states where permitted, with many such employers opting not to even test for THC.
The percentage of specimens tested for THC declined 6.7% nationwide in 2021 from 2020, while that figure fell by 10.3% in states where recreational marijuana is legal, according to Quest’s data.
“We certainly heard from some of our employer customers that they were having difficulty finding qualified workers to pass the drug test,” Dr. Sample said of pre-employment tests for THC, especially in states where use of the drug is legal.
Overall, the proportion of U.S. workers who tested positive for the various drugs Quest screened for in 2021 rose to 4.6%, the highest level since 2001, according to Quest, which analyzed nearly nine million overall urine tests last year on behalf of employers.
That percentage is more than 31% higher than the low of 3.5% a decade ago, in the early days of a resurgent heroin epidemic in the U.S.
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