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Miscellaneous Points on Drugs

A few other facts behind the policies whose effectiveness is dubious, at best.

Drug test

What about drug law enforcement at the work place is it effect? In Alaska The great 90 anti-marijuana message had no effect on workers injuries/illness. Because that rate has remained relatively steady ever since 1975(1 ).

A pair of studies at Utah Power and lights Co. and Georgia Power company purporting to show that drug user's pose a high risk of accidents and absenteeism only looked at user's who had exhibited problem behavior on the job. Not surprisingly , this population had worse than average work records. Nevertheless Utah power found that drug user's less in health insurance benefits, while Georgia power found lower rates of absenteeism in worker who tested positive for Marijuana (2 ).

The performance of even the "best" toxicology laboratories on urine drug screens are grossly defective with frequent misidentifications. Error rates on unknown samples commonly run as high as 20% to 70% (3 ).

An issue of Journal of General Internal Medicine said "As screening test, two important technical features need to be considered in testing urine for drugs-It's accuracy and it's validity. Although the operational characteristics of urine drug testing are not known, recent literature indicates, that, as with other emerging technologies, it is fraught with technical difficulties. It is our belief that even if these technical problems were fully soluble, the ethical, and medico legal ones are not" (4 ).

Opinions/points of View

President Reagan's Commission on Organized Crime review the progress on the war on drug in 1986 and concluded what was obvious: " Despite continuing expressions of determination, America war on Drugs seems nowhere close to success."(5 ).

Member of US congress Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), opposes decriminalization of drugs, still said "Billions upon billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars have been spent. In spite of our efforts, the positive results are few and far between," and noted "Clearly, the time has come to take a fresh look at our counternarcotics efforts." (6 ).

Something else to think about is research has shown lowering penalties for cannabis use did not cause a rise in its use(7 ).