Getting potential employees who can pass a drug screening test can be difficult, but what about after they’re employed?

Garry Wentz, the administrator at Pennsylvania CareerLink Carbon County in Jim Thorpe, said pre-employment drug screening tests really do weed out most of the people who have a drug problem. The rest get discovered later.“Most of the companies who do pre-screening usually do random checking,” Wentz said.Random checking is just that — random. These tests can be done any time during employment without prior notification to the employees.The tests work.Both Susy Seifert, the office manager at Structural Metal Fabricators Inc., and Marshall Walters, corporate executive officer and president of Architectural Polymers, have come across employees who fail the test.Once discovered, they’re dismissed from their jobs.One employee told Seifert he couldn’t drink alcohol because of his diabetes, so he took drugs. Walters said he knows of former employees who ended up dying from drug overdoses.Jamie Drake, the acting director of the Carbon-Monroe-Pike Drug and Alcohol Commission, said the number one reason people come there is for opioid addiction. Opioids include prescription medications used to relieve serious pain such as morphine and the illegal drug heroin.The second reason is for alcohol abuse and the third is for marijuana. Adolescents in particular are the largest group of marijuana users.According to Drake, employers are supposed to help their employees get help for their addictions, not just fire them.The state does have this policy in place for state employees, but private companies do not have to adhere to that practice.Luke Wake, an attorney for the National Federation of Independent Businesses, said, “That may be the charitable thing to do, but employers need that flexibility to terminate employment. The general rule is that employment is an ‘at-will’ situation.”The state’s support of an employer’s decision to let go of an employee due to failure of a drug test is echoed in unemployment compensation law.Under the section on benefit eligibility, the law states, “… an individual who is discharged from employment for reasons that are considered to be willful misconduct connected with his/her work, is not eligible to receive benefits.”Willful misconduct is defined as wanton disregard of the employer’s interests, deliberate violation of rules, disregard of standards of behavior that can be rightfully expected, or negligence that shows “culpability, wrongful intent, evil design, or intentional and substantial disregard of the employer’s interests or of the employee’s duties and obligations.”Among the six categories of reasons to discharge an employee and be denied benefits is drug and alcohol testing.The Unemployment Compensation law provides “for the denial of benefits for failure to submit to and/or pass a drug or alcohol test, provided the test is lawful and not in disagreement with an existing labor agreement.To be eligible for unemployment compensation, the claimant must show that the test was unlawful, violated an existing labor agreement, or was inaccurate.”For the test to be unlawful, the former employee would have to show that it violated public policy, Wake said. For instance, the employee has to be given privacy when providing a sample for drug testing. Those being tested can’t be a singled-out population, because there could be an argument of discrimination.Wake said even in states where marijuana use for medical reasons has been legalized, employers still have a right under federal law to discharge an employee who fails a drug screening test.The Colorado Supreme Court ruled in June 2015 that as long as marijuana use is illegal under federal law, then employers can create their own drug policies.“Employers can continue to enforce a zero-tolerance policy,” he said.Pennsylvania has not yet legalized marijuana use for any reason. It is legal in 23 states and Washington, D.C.Although the court ruling in Colorado is a win for businesses, the NFIB advises companies to state specifically in its policy regarding marijuana use. If they say they have a zero-tolerance for marijuana use, then that should be enough.As far as how often employees fail drug tests, well, that number just isn’t known. Wentz, the administrator at Pennsylvania CareerLink Carbon County, said employers don’t have to report the number of employees who have failed a drug test, nor do they have to report them to the authorities.“I do not recall seeing any that came to us like that in the last year,” said Carbon County District Attorney Jean Engler.