Does Drug Use by Workers
Really Reduce Productivity?

Of the estimated 11.8 million adult illicit drug users in the U.S., 9.1 million or 77 percent are employed either full time or part time. It has been repeatedly reported, based on the Firestone Study, that workers who use illegal drugs have twice the absenteeism and five times as many workmens’ compensation claims as non-users. Their drug use is reported to cost the American economy $246 billion per year in lost productivity.

These widely reported claims are highly dubious according to a recent review by Dr. David F. Duncan, President of Duncan and Associates and Chair of the National Association for Public Health Policy’s Council on Illicit Drugs. "One of the first things I learned in my review," Dr. Duncan said, "was that the much cited ‘Firestone Study’ never took place." The much-quoted statistics attributed to this 'study' actually come from an interview published in an internal newsletter of the Firestone Corporation. They are not the result of any systematic study and furthermore refer to alcoholic workers, not workers who use illegal drugs.

The claim that employee drug use costs the economy $246 billion dollars also turned out to be mainly about alcohol, not illegal drugs. Sixty percent of the reported lost productivity turns out to be attributable to alcoholism among workers. This still leaves a very substantial $98 billion in productivity lost as a result of employees drug use. Nevertheless, the question remained what evidence is there that drug use really causes this loss of production.

Searching the literature for any real studies supporting the widely reported claims regarding lost productivity, Dr. Duncan found that no study had been reported that actually used any direct measure of an impact of drug use on worker productivity. Instead, researchers had used employment rates and average wages as indirect indicators of productivity - the assumption being that productive workers would be paid more and would experience less unemployment.

When the actual studies were examined, Dr. Duncan found that they showed that drug addicts averaged lower employment rates and wages. Most drug users in the workforce, however, are not addicted and the studies did not find any difference between non-addicted users of illegal drugs and non-users.

The findings from these studies provide little reason to believe that urine-screening employees for illicit drug use will do anything to improve productivity. A urine screen cannot distinguish a drug addict from an non-addicted drug user nor can it distinguish the person who uses drugs on the job from the one who does not. Dr. Duncan concludes that employers and society would be better off if they focused on identifying and treating drug addicts. Addressing the Labor Caucus of the American Public Health Association, he said, "drug addicts in the workplace can be far more adequately identified by monitoring absenteeisnm, late arrivals, and poor work performance than by testing their urine and these are matters any employer should be monitoring anyway."

References:

Duncan, D. F. (2002). Drug use by workers, does it reduce productivity? Paper presented to the Labor Caucus of the American Public Health Association.

Nicholson, T., White, J., Cline, R., Minors, P, & Duncan, D. (2001). Parents who report using illicit drugs: Findings and implications from the DRUGNET study. Psychological Reports, 88, 245-251.

White, J. B., Nicholson, T., Minors, P., & Duncan, D. (2001). A demographic profile of employed users of illicit drugs. Current Topics in Management, 6, 353-370