DRUG TESTING AND THE
PRESIDENT'S COMMISSION ON ORGANIZED CRIME
132 Cong Rec H 2386 Tuesday, May 6, 1986
Congressional Record -- House
Tuesday, May 6, 1986
99th Cong. 2nd Sess.
132 Cong Rec H 2386
REFERENCE: Vol. 132 No. 59
TITLE:
SPEAKER: Mr. SHAW
TEXT: The SPEAKER pro tempore
(Mr. Darden). Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Florida
[Mr. Shaw] is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. SHAW. Mr. Speaker, there has been considerable controversy surrounding the
recommendation of the President's Commission on Organized Crime
for "suitable drug testing programs." I would categorize the negative
publicity about the recommendation as a knee-jerk reaction. Some people reacted
out of legitimate civil liberties concerns while others saw this as a classic
issue with which to "demagogue" for anxious Federal employees and a
media hungry for potential scandal.
Much of the reaction that I am talking about today seemed to be based on a
belief that across-the-board mandatory drug testing for all Federal employees
had been recommended. Nothing of the sort was intended. If Members of this body
hope to advance the rational consideration of the drug testing issue they should
carefully study the Commission's report, the supplemental views of the
Commissioners which I am about to introduce into the Record, and my own
mandatory drug testing bill for Federal employees with security clearances.
I got involved with this issue because of my belief that the private sector was
right in testing its employees to prevent productivity losses due to drug abuse
by employees. Drug tests have recently been administered on a voluntary basis to
the members of my Washington office and I am extremely proud that they have
agreed to join me in demonstrating that any use of illegal narcotics is wrong. I
will be paying for these tests out of my own pocket because the rules of this
House do not permit paying for them as an official expense. Incidentally, I have
introduced House Resolution 394, to change those rules so that a responsible
drug testing program for Congressmen and their staffs could be implemented on a
voluntary basis.
My mandatory drug testing bill, H.R. 4636, is not an across-the-board drug
testing bill. It will not lead to violations of civil liberties on a massive
scale. We are all aware of the tremendous pace of events in the Capitol and the
recent increase in espionage prosecutions involving current and former Federal
employees. My bill is flexible. It gives employing authorities maximum
discretion as to the procedures for implementing responsible drug testing. For
example, the appropriate agency head or Member of Congress would determine
whether a positive test would lead to retesting, drug counseling, employment
termination, or some combination of those options.
A mandatory testing program for employees with security clearances represents my
own interpretation of "suitable drug testing." I can understand that
others may differ but I find it singularly reprehensible that the drug testing
issue is being used to alarm Federal employee groups and to feed the press with
stories about the potential for massive civil liberties violations.
I see the need to exercise some leadership. We are servants of the public and
that gives us some very special privileges and responsibilities. One of those
responsibilities should be to affirmatively demonstrate, by personal example,
that any form of drug abuse, whether recreational or habitual, is not be
tolerated. More importantly, we owe it to the American people to take all
necessary measures to protect this country's national security. A responsible
drug testing program for Federal employees with security clearances is a clear
step in a responsible direction.
I hope that others will not miss one of the central messages of the Commission's
report -- that there is a need to reevaluate our national drug policy and to
consider strategies which address the demand side of the narcotics trafficking
equation. I support the supply side interdiction efforts of law enforcement but
I also support demand side drug education and testing programs when appropriate.
I might add, Mr. Speaker, that a March USA Today poll showed that 62 percent of
the American people support mandatory drug testing for Federal workers even
though such an across-the-board concept is not what the Commission or my
legislation had intended. The overwhelming majority -- 77 percent -- have no
objection to being tested in the workplace.
I would like to conclude by asking that the supplemental views of four of the Organized
Crime Commissioner's be printed in the Record. They elevate the
discussion by providing the context in which the original drug testing
recommendations were made. I urge my colleagues to carefully consider the
concept of "suitable drug testing." That is what the Commission
recommended and that is what I am attempting to accomplish through H.R. 4636.
Mr. Speaker, I include the views I referred on the Organized Crime
Commission, as follows:
[Report to the President and the Attorney General]
THE IMPACT: ORGANIZED CRIME TODAY
SUPPLEMENTAL VIEWS OF COMMISSIONERS BREWER, MANUEL, METHVIN, AND ROWAN
Two recommendations by this Commission in its report on drug abuse, drug
trafficking and organized crime were widely misreported and
misrepresented before the american public. The result has been monumental
confusion about this Commission's intent on a crucial weapon in the nation's
armory in the attack on domestic demand for illegal drugs.
Under the title of "Reducing the Demand for Drugs." The Commission's
Recommendations 3 and 8 proposed "suitable drug testing programs" for
federal employees and those of government contractors, and
"appropriate" programs for private employees. The Commission used
these general "consensus" words to raise the topic for debate without
spelling out its members own policy preferences. The stage was thus set for a
disaster in public communication -- one of those "tempest in a teapot"
controversies that provide front-page copy, colorful quotes by extreme
antagonists in public debate, and great confusion on the part of the public,
with very little advancement in the rational consideration of a very serious
national problem.
At a press conference accompanying the drug report's release, Deputy executive
Rodney Smith, its principal author, was pressed by reporters to define and
explain the Commission's testing proposal. Some of the reporters took a partisan
stance and immediately termed it "unconstitutional," and questioned
whether the Commission was proposing to test some, a majority, or all federal
employees, and what proportion of nongovernmental employees would be tested.
Smith commented, "We are suggesting to every employer in the nation that he
should consider the suitability of drug testing... In more cases than not, it is
appropriate... If you take an honest look, in most all cases it would be
suitable."
That response got translated into news stories that the Commission proposed
testing "all federal employees" (New York Times); "all federal
employees and government contractors" (Washington Post); "most working
Americans" (New York Times); and "every American worker"
(Christian Science Monitor). None of these newspapers actually quoted the
Commission report's recommendations, even in paraphrase. By contrast, the
Atlanta Constitution stated the Commission "suggested American employers
consider testing their workers for drug abuse."
It would be a heedless waste of public resources to test all federal employees
in a campaign against illegal drug use. We have no indication that drug use is
so widespread as to warrant blanket testing. Yet certainly the federal
government and its employees should set an example for the rest of the nation.
Working for Uncle Sam is a high privilege, as is evident by the perpetual
surfeit of federal job seekers. Congress and the President have declared drug
trafficking illegal, and there can be little doubt that they are reflecting the
strong conviction of the overwhelming majority of the American people. Federal
employees should shun the use of illegal drugs and set an example of intolerance
of those who do use or traffic in them. Brave federal officers risk their lives
daily trying to stop the criminals and terrorists who run this trade. The user
is a part of the trafficking. The American people have a right to hold federal
employees to the highest standards of conduct, and to fire those who contribute
to this criminal threat to our national security, and the security of friendly
governments with more fragile democratic institutions than our own.
Accordingly, where there is an objective reason to believe a federal employee is
using illegal drugs, the American public has the right to ask him to undergo a
test. If illegal drug use is detected, if the test is reliable and is confirmed
by other evidence, including additional testing, and if the drug use persists on
retesting during a probationary period, the employees should be fired.
Drug abuse in the workplace costs the American economy and people untold
billions in lost productivity, unnecessary accidents, property damage, injury
and deaths. Statistics measuring this social phenomenon are inevitably
inaccurate and unreliable. Many of the figures come from commercial consultants
on drug abuse who have firing-line experience, but whose vested interest makes
them suspect in the eyes of the social science purist. Nevertheless, what they
may lack in objectivity may be balanced by what they possess in real-world
involvement.
Several survey groups have developed an alarming profile of the average drug
abuser in the work force:
He is late to work three times more than other employees, asks to go home early
2.5 times more often, absent from work 16 times more, is seven times more likely
to have wage garnishments, makes five times more compensation claims, files four
times more grievances, receives three times more health benefits, is involved in
four times the accidents. He is between ages 18 and 35 and buys an average of
$1000 worth of illicit drugs yearly. n1
n1 Many of these indicators are drawn from a profile developed from thousands of
drug assistance cases by Joseph Lodge, president of a Miami-based consulting
firm, Corporate Security Advisors, Inc., which specializes in drug-abuse
education for industry.
Many companies have already adopted drug screening programs. A 1985 survey
showed that 18 percent of the surveyed Fortune 500 companies now have drug
testing and another 19 percent were seriously considering adopting programs
soon. The Associated Builders and Contractors, Inc., a trade association
embracing 18,000 member firms, has termed drug abuse "constructions' hidden
epidemic" and developed a comprehensive plan to help contractors fight drug
(and alcohol) abuse. The association estimates at least 20 percent of all
construction workers nationwide has a drug or alcohol abuse problem. A spokesman
reports that firms who have begun drug testing find that within three to six
months accidents drop by more than 30 percent, absenteeism declines and quality
control improves. n2 A physican consultant to auto industry unions estimates
more than a third of all auto workers use drugs on the job, and lost
productivity and increased injury claims due to drug and alcohol abuse combined
add an estimated $175 to the price of each car sold to American consumers.
n2 Bruce Wilkinson, Associated Builders and Contractors, Inc., 729 15th Street,
N.W., Washington, D.C. 20005.
According to two leading authorities, "The most important drug abuse
prevention action which can be taken in the work place is to educate and empower
the nonusers who comprise the large majority of workers so all ages and all
levels in the company act to stop drug and alcohol problems. Nonusers need to
know how much the drug and alcohol use of their fellow workers is costing them,
and they need to be encouraged to act to end drug-caused problems." n3
n3 Dr. Robert L. DuPont, former director, National Institute of Drug Abuse; and
George L. Aubach, a director of Straight, Inc., an Atlanta-based non-profit
treatment program for young drug users.
Just as no employer would think of undergoing surgery on the basis of a single
blood or urine test, no employer should fire an employee on the evidence of
single test. Urine tests under the most careful and accurate conditions tell
only that there was exposure in the past. They tell nothing about the time of
the exposure, or the effects, or the source. LSD and the "designer"
drugs escape the standard urine and blood tests. Certain herbal teas available
legally over the counter in the last two or three years will yield positive
tests for cocaine use because they contain coca. Some policemen exposed to PCP
in drug raids have been showing traces in their urine as much as three years
later. Just as a blood or urine test is only one measure to be considered in a
decision for surgery, to be complemented by other medical diagnostic expertise,
including interviews, a drug test should be only a part of an employer's
decision-making process in a balanced and professional drug prevention program.
We must guard against a panic reaction in which "test abuse" becomes a
new and pernicious part of our national drug problem. n4
n4 These words of caution reflect the views of a participant in the Commission's
symposium on drug abuse and countermeasures, one of the nation's leading medical
researchers, Dr. Ron Siegel, Ph.D., who directs the Center on Drug Culture and
Pathology, UCLA School of Medicine.
Obviously, in those occupations and functions involving public safety, employers
should be more alert, and more strict in setting their standard of probable
cause of testing and their standard of evidence for corrective action, whether
to resort to probation, mandatory treatment, or discharge. The standards for
screening policemen and airline pilots, for example, would be different for
those for production line workers or postal workers. Yet simple considerations
of productivity and the right of every worker to a drug-free environment seem to
justify testing and other investigation on the slightest objective indication of
drug use. Certainly in the more critical jobs involving public safety, and
possibly in other situations, random or blanket testing may be justifiable.
IV
A national drug abuse surveillance program in which police departments would
test all persons arrested on serious criminal charges would give Americans a
major new weapon against both organized crime and
"ordinary" crime and violence. Such a program could be carried out at
very small cost with a potentially vast payoff in crime prevention.
We often overlook the critical linkages among organized crime,
drug trafficking, and street crime and violence. Heroin and probably cocaine are
chemicals which bind individual street criminals to organized crime
and convert them into predatory servants who forage and rob and steal from
productive Americans for the mobsters. The organized crime
operators catch the street criminal coming and going. He must deal with them for
his drugs, and in order to sell the goods he steals he must turn to them for
fencing. Thus, in a significant degree, organized crime profits
handsomely from the seemingly unconnected burglaries and robberies whose
frequency has soared in America in the last quarter century right along with
drug use.
Recent research has demonstrated the close connection between drug usage and
criminal predation. Researches at Temple University and the University of
Maryland interviewed 243 randomly-selected Baltimore addicts about their crimes
over an eleven-year period. The addicts were responsible for some 500,000
crimes, far exceeding their number of arrests. They averaged 2,058 crimes per
addict, 187 per year. But their drug dependency was not constant, nor were their
crimes. When they were off drugs their crime rate was 84 percent lower than when
they were shooting regularly. The researches also discovered the addicts became
"more vicious and violent" in the 1970s than in earlier years, and 40
percent carried weapons. n5 Another study found that less than one percent of
the crimes committed by addicts resulted in arrests. n6 Still another study,
this one in Miami, found that 365 heroin users committed 118,134 crimes during a
single year, an average of 324 each, nearly, a crime a day. n7
n5 Bell, John C., Rosen, Lawrence, and Flueck, John A., of Temple University,
and Nurco, David N., of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, reported
in New York Times, March 22, 1981.
n6 Inciardi, James A., University of Delaware.
n7 James K. Stewart, National Institute of Justice, personal interview.
Consider the case of a trio of burglars who operated for several months in the
Maryland and Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., before their apprehension.
They became infamous among police and newspaper readers as "the silver
burglars," because they carefully separated their victims' belongings,
discarded plate and taking only sterling as they ransacked homes, and their
selection was always highly accurate. They also took jewelry and small antique
items. For about six months this trio burglarized three homes every night, in
constantly shifting neighborhoods, with the exception of a single "night
off" that perplexed investigators. Their total haul ran into the millions,
and they sold it to fencing organizations for a fraction of its value. A diamond
ring worth $5000, for instance, brought them $250; they could not afford to
argue with their buyers. The team was broken up when one was arrested on a rape
charge and another was caught doing a "solo" burglary; the third was
eventually arrested on an unrelated charge. They turned out to be addicts, each
with a $300 a day habit. Two steadfastly refused to talk, but one readily
confessed to the "silver burglaries" and pointed out many of the
victimized residences. Even he, however, refused to reveal their
"fencing" connections because he was afraid of being murdered if he
did so.
Drug abuse has been proven to be a telltale indicator for identifying the
high-rate violent predators who comprise a relatively small fraction of criminal
offenders but who are responsible for an inordinately large majority of the
nation's violent and "fear" crimes of homicides, rape, robbery,
burglary and assault. Ten years ago, virtually nothing was known about the rates
at which individual criminals commit crimes or what proportions of the
population were involved in crime. Since then a broad array of new research
sponsored chiefly by the U.S.Justice Department reveals that a far larger share
of crime is committed by a far smaller fraction of high-rate offenders than
anyone dreamed. n8 Moreover, even the high-rate offenders are not homogenous.
Though they comprise only about seven percent of the male population and account
for two-thirds of all the violent crimes, these high-rate offenders contain an
even smaller group of super criminals whose incarceration would have an
inordinate crime-prevention effect. For example, locking up one high-rate
burglar for a year will prevent as many crimes as locking up 40 of the
intermittent burglars. Keeping one super-robber behind bars prevents as many
robberies as imprisoning 17 of the less active majority. n9
n8 Wolfgang, Marvin E., Figlio, Robert M., and Sellin, Thorsten,
"Delinquency in a Birth Cohort" (University of Chicago Press, 1972).
This was the initial report on Wolfgang's analysis of the criminal records of
some 10,000 18-year-olds born in Philadelphia in 1945. The Wolfgang project
followed the 1945 birth cohort through their 30th birthdays. Then, at the
request of Attorney General Edward Levi, Wolfgang replicated the study with the
entire Philadelphia birth cohort of 1958. The results through the 30th year will
of course not be available until sometime after 1988, but anlysis of the 1945
cohort through the 30th birthday and the 1958 cohort through the 18th birthday
has been widely reported. See, e.g., Wolfgang, and Tracy, Paul E., Incidence,
and Severity of Delinquent Behavior (Philadelphia Center for Studies in
Criminology and Criminal Law, University of Pennsylvania), 1982.
n9 Chaiken and Chaiken, "Varieties of Criminal Behavior" (Santa
Monica: The Rand Corporation, R-2814-NIJ, August 1982). See also Greenwood,
Peter, with Allan Abrahamse, "Selective Incapacitation" (Santa Monica:
The Rand Corporation, R-2815-NIJ, August 1982).
Installing a national drug abuse surveillance program would give the criminal
justice system a major weapon for winnowing out these high-rate violent
predators. Rand Corporation researchers conducted a series of pioneering
interviews and scientific surveys among 2,190 imprisoned convicts in California,
Michigan and Texas prisons and jails, carefully verifying their responses. Drug
use proved to be a key indicator for distinguishing the high-rate offenders from
the intermittents. "Offenders who have to support $50-a-day heroin
addictions or who use both alcohol and barbiturates heavily and frequently are
especially likely to be persistent, serious, high-rate criminals," the Rand
researchers reported. And they warned: "Prosecutors and judges should be
wary of leaning toward short sentences and offenders convicted of major, violent
crimes who appear to have been acting uncharacteristically because they were
"high" on drugs at the time. The drug use should, in fact, be viewed
as possibly indicating that the behavior for which the offender was convicted is
characteristic of his deviant life-style." n10
n10 Id. Chaiken and Chaiken, at 25-26.
Prolonged heroin addiction is readily visible to virtually any trained medical
observer and even to many casual observers. Identifying high-quality barbiturate
use and alcohol abuse requires a slightly more sophisticated physical
examination, but the pathological effects are specific and detectable. These two
factors are strong predictors of high robbery rates among robbery suspects.
Police departments can vastly improve their ability to identify and incarcerate
high-rate robbers and burglars by using urine tests and medical exams to pick
them out for concentrated investigation and prosecutive attention. Probation
officers can use surprise tests to help detect probationers' relapse into crime.
The National Institute of Drug Abuse has demonstrated the feasibility of routine
drug tests for persons arrested for serious criminal offenders. Testimony before
this commission shows that drug-specific urine tests can be run on criminal
arrestees for heroin and other opiates, cocaine and PCP for about $5.50 apiece.
An additional less sensitive test for 14 drugs can be administered for less than
$2 per test. Thus the United States could have screened every one of the 317,744
young persons under 21 arrested in 1984 for murder, rape, assault, robbery and
burglary, for well under $3 million. n11 If a young offender shows a pattern of
drug use over two or more arrests, suggest the RAND researchers, police and
prosecutors would be alerted to look carefully for multiple offenses.
n11 Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1984 "Uniform Crime Reports"
(Washington: Government Printing Office, 1985), page 178.