Drug Testing and Ethics Essay

Is medicate scrutinying an unwarranted attack of employee privacy? Which is to a greater extent important fix doses fall out of the workplace or protect the privacy of the employee? What near former(a) health-threatening trans performivities, i. e. sess outside of working hours, unprotected sex, and so on Should employers be open to question or probe employees or potential employees to the toweringest degree these activities? Both of these scenarios atomic number 18 tricky atomic number 53s. On the whiz strive, any employer would want to get drugs out of the workplace.On the other hand you dont want to encroach upon an employees privacy. At the same(p) snip some hire outs may require employees to aline to a genuine standard of air both on and off the job, scarcely how a lot is too much? How much should be employees be judged and how high of a standard should be set. Where do we muckle the line? Shaw and Barry in their text lesson Issues in Business re alm A firm has a legitimate sp atomic number 18- clip activity in employee conduct off the job only if it excises work public presentation (Shaw & Barry 2010, p477).It back be argued that as long as the drug recitation doesnt affect the employees work performance, past he shouldnt be tried and true. If he is tested and the result is imperious, but work performance is satisfactory, soce drug employ should non be considered as grounds for termination. perchance a better behavior to state this could be that as long as employee performance meets or exceeds the expected standards, so drug exam should non be use even out if drug use is suspected. Egoism burn down be used to argue from both winds of view. accord to this theory, an act is justeously indemnify if and only if it high hat promotes an agents interests (Shaw & Barry, 2010 p59). Following this theory, if the employer drug tests several employees and fires all who test incontrovertible, then they are pe rforming in their surpass interests. On the other hand, if the employees dress hat interests are served through their drug usage, then the employee has acted in the take up moral way that he can. Using this theory does merely raise some interesting questions.If the best possible person for a specific job is fired as a result of a drug test result, and the companys performance in that specific department falls as a result of this, then was the action a morally right unity? From a personal point of view, I be pillow inve that drug testing should be used only if the job requirements requisite it. I dont get hold any strike for the person who picks up my garbage to be tested. I do however see a need for the school crossing guard at my childrens school to be tested.The person who shovels the snow from my driveway in the spend and mows my lawn in the spring and summer doesnt need to be drug tested. My gear up should be. Several years ago my keep up and I had a spat oer my decision to hire the town inebriated to do some lawn work and foreshorten some channelise branches off our roof. In all fairness I had no idea that he was the town rummy when I hired him, I was out in our backyard picking up locomote branches and he walked by at that moment.He posited if I had any odd jobs to be d single and since he came across as clean and presentable and lucid I hired him on the spot. It wasnt until trinity weeks later when my maintain came home ahead of time and saw Bruce (the town drunk) at the roundabout of a 50 foot tree sawing branches off that he realized who his spick-and-span handyman was. Since he was usually the peerless on call at night whenever Bruce had one of his benders and had had cleaned him up several times, he now k naked where Bruce was getting his drinking gold from. My husband came home and told me hed fired him.I rehired Bruce a daytime later. My reasoning was that hed never shown up drunk, he did a slap-up job on any confin ement I set for him and his fee was reasonable. It was inwardly my best interests to keep Bruce sedulous and so I was acting as an egoist. It was within Bruces best interests to remain employed since it gave him the money to support his habit. He was acting as an egoist. We were both alike chase the theory of Libertarianism under which each person is free to live as he or she wishes free from the interference of others (Shaw & Barry, 2010 p122).My husband in his decision to fire Bruce was also acting partially from an egoist point of view since an unemployed Bruce meant a sedate Bruce which meant no trips to the ER which meant that my husband wouldnt constitute to deal with a cursing, screaming, fucking(a) drunk Bruce. At the same time he was also acting from Kants theory which states that Only when we act from a sense of duty does our action have moral worth (Shaw & Barry, 2010 p69). My husband matt-up that it was his duty as a fraction of the medical profession, not to e nable a habit that could possibly cause prostitute to an individual.A high incidence of insincere positive results in drug testing is another reason for the command that drug testing should not be used. In researching this paper I was surprised to go through how many over the counter drugs can produce counterfeit positive results. According to an article on The National decoct for Biotechnology Information website entitled ordinarily prescribed medications and potential ludicrous positive urine drug screens published Aug fifteenth 2010, A number of routinely prescribed medications have been associated with take offing false-positive UDS results.Verification of the test results with a different viewing test or additional analytical tests should be performed to debar adverse consequences for the patients. Some of the to a greater extent(prenominal) prevalent drugs that could produce false positive results were over-the-counter(prenominal) nasal inhalers much(prenomina l) as Vicks, antihistamines, antidepressants, and antibiotics much(prenominal) as Amoxicillin which has been associated with false positive urine screens for cocaine. Employers should not be able to question or test employees about other behaviors that they might consider health threatening.This is a rather grey subject and raises the questions of where to draw the line. For example if a company which is trying to reduce health damages cost, decides to eliminate all smokers from their payroll since it costs more than to in undisputable smokers, shouldnt they then eliminate overweight employees who are more likely to develop health problems than enclothe ones? What about employees with pre-existing conditions such as high cholesterol or high blood pressure or kidney problems? Shouldnt they be eliminated as well?Should employers be allowed to use polygraph tests to screen out potentially costly employees who may engage in illegal drug use or any of these activities? The polygraph test, or as it is more commonly known, the lie sensing element test measures several physiological with in the mankind body such as change magnitude blood pressure, increased pulse and respiration. heretofore in spite of what most lot believe it is not the most veritable test. Shaw and Barry in their text Moral Issues in Business list three assumptions do by those who advocate for the use of these tests. These assumptions are*1.Lying leave behind automatically trigger a distinctive chemical reaction to the question. * 2. Polygraphs are very accurate. * 3. Polygraphs cannot be beaten. (Shaw & Barry, 2010 p480). Unfortunately for these advocates slice the polygraph test measures bodily responses to questions it cannot indicate whether or not the response is actually a lie. A person who has a fib of being abused may file different reactions to questions along that subject neighborhood and all that these reactions may indicate is pique to the question not necessarily that the response to the question itself is a lie.Opinions vary as to just how accurate the tests are with the percentages ranging from 90% to as low as 55%, the higher percentages coming not astonishingly from the American Polygraph Association. Finally polygraph tests can be beaten and even generate false positives. Spies John Walker and Aldrich Ames both passed polygraph tests as did Gary Ridgeway the Green Killer. Ames actually passed ii different polygraph tests.Since these tests are costly, apply them as a screening method for either new hires or present employees may not be the best ascendent and should be considered on a suit by case basis. Other methods should be used before resorting to polygraphs testing such as drug testing which may indicate previous drug use (although as has been mentioned earlier some false positive results may occur) or even background tests which may turn up questionable incidents. If during the course of these two checks questions are raised abou t the employee or new hire, then the employer could resort to the use of a polygraph.It could be argued that utilizing either or both of these two other methods is even more costly to the employers but I would recount that any employer who needs to use a polygraph test to weed out potentially costly employees could afford to administer the pointless tests to be absolutely sure. Fortunately for most employees, the Employee Polygraph Protection make out of 1988 which protects the rights of employees and outlines the usage and restrictions of lie detector tests states The EPPA prohibits most private employers from using lie detector tests, either for preemployment screening or during the course of employment.Employers generally may not require or beseech any employee or job applicator to take a lie detector test, or discharge, discipline, or discriminate once morest an employee or job applicant for refusing to take a test or for exercising other rights under the Act It then goes o n to outline just which employers are permitted to enforce lie detector tests Subject to restrictions, the Act permits polygraph (a type of lie detector) tests to be administered to certain job applicants of security service firms (armored car, alarm, and guard) and of pharmaceutical manufacturers, distributors, and dispensers.Subject to restrictions, the Act also permits polygraph testing of certain employees of private firms who are moderately suspected of involvement in a workplace incident (theft, embezzlement, etc. ) that resulted in specific economic loss or injury to the employer. (United States Department of Labor website) My argument to using a polygraph test therefore would be that assuming that the employer fell into one of these categories then yes they should be permitted to utilize lie detector tests but only as a last resort. I stash away this argument using the rule utilitarianism theory. This is not to be confused with act utilitarianism. to a lower place act utilitarianism, we ask must ask ourselves what the consequences of a particular act in a particular situation will be for all those affected. If its consequences bring more total good than those of any alternative course of action, then this action is the right one (Shaw & Barry, 2010 p63) The action that produces the greatest get of happiness is the right one. Rule utilitarianism asks what moral decree a society should hold to maximize happiness. The principles that make up that polity would then be the basis for distinguishing right actions from wrong actions (Shaw & Barry, 2010 p80-81).Under act utilitarianism, if 20 employees were polygraphed and 15 of them failed the test and were fired as a result, then the action would not be a moral one since more people would be left field unhappy rather than happy. Using those same figures, if the rule or moral code that needed to be followed was that of a no drug policy, and the same 20 employees were polygraphed and again 15 failed and were fired, then the action would be a morally right one since firing the 15 employees made sure that the moral code was enforced.Referenceshttp//www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20689123http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygraph_testhttp//www.dol.gov/compliance/ leave/eppa.htmwho