Pre-employment drug testing vital

NEWS RELEASE

Pre-employment drug testing a vital step towards creating a safer workplace

Auckland, 1 March 2017: Pre-employment drug testing is crucial to ensure that drugs don't even make it through the door at businesses around the country.

The Drug Detection Agency (TDDA) CEO Kirk Hardy says the fact a failed test rules some Kiwis out of securing jobs probably isn't a bad thing. "Pre-employment drug testing is the first line of defence for any employer to ensure no potential employee is at risk of putting themselves or others in danger in the workplace through substance use."

TDDA specialises in workplace drug and alcohol training and testing, as well as pre-employment testing, and last year conducted more than 140,000 workplace drug tests.

Latest TDDA statistics show that pre-employment drug tests are steadily increasing, up 4.7 percent on the previous year, which Kirk says is positive. "This is great to see as it means employers are being pro-active and stopping the drug use before it even enters the workplace."

Kirk partly attributes this heightened awareness of the danger of drugs and alcohol in the workplace to the recent introduction of the new Health and Safety at Work Act, which requires a Drug & Alcohol policy to be implemented. He also states that education is a vital part of this process.

The latest TDDA statistics show that properly trained and informed managers are also creating a safer workplace. "Comprehensive manager training and education appears to be working as our statistics reflect an increase in 'reasonable cause' tests, which means businesses now have the confidence to identify potential drug issues and are taking a proactive approach and testing staff they believe to be taking drugs."

Some indicators of drug use include consistently being late to work, lots of sick days, tiredness, being easily agitated and either dilated or constricted pupils.

The use of methamphetamine - or meth as it's known - is up with TDDA national statistics for the year ending December 2016, showing an increase of almost 13 percent on the 2015 year for the detection of methamphetamine. In all drug tests conducted nationwide in 2016 meth accounts for approximately 13.5 percent of those where a drug is detected.

"Meth shows strongly in our workplace drug test results throughout New Zealand making it the second most detected drug behind cannabis. It's more readily available than ever before unfortunately, and businesses need to be very aware that it crosses all levels of society and all types of employees," Kirk says.

He adds that the widespread use of meth is affecting not only the workplace but also the whole of the community. This is also reflected in the increase in both volume and meth related violent crime.

tdda.com
TDDA has ISO15189:2012 accreditation for workplace drug testing (see NATA and IANZ websites for further detail). TDDA is considered to be a leader in its field with more than 50 locations throughout Australasia. www.tdda.com

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