Business: The Rising Problem of Drugs on the Job

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In many companies, the personnel department rigidly screens applicants to discover addicts before they are hired. Manhattan-based Con Edison, for example, turned away 44 addicted job seekers in 1968 and 78 last year. Companies have recently begun demanding that applicants submit to a special urine analysis; in the case of users, the test turns up traces of barbiturates, amphetamines and morphine, which the body metabolizes out of heroin. The tests have led to a burgeoning business for private laboratories; some do several hundred urinalyses a day, at $4.50 each. Even these tests are not foolproof. If a specimen shows a hint of quinine, which is often used to cut heroin, the applicant can be refused —but he could have picked it up simply by drinking a gin and tonic, which also contains quinine. Another drawback is that the tests cannot detect heavy users of marijuana because it leaves no noticeable after-trace.

Corporate officials, many of whom once denied that their firms had a drug problem, are trying increasingly to cope with it. Last week representatives of 17 major organizations in New York City, including Atlantic Richfield, the New York Times Co., Manufacturers Hanover Trust and Chemical Bank, met to pool information on means of combatting drug abuse on the job. The Merchants & Manufacturers Association in Southern California has instituted a series of "shop talks" on handling drugs; the meetings have attracted hundreds of corporate officials.

So far, such efforts fall well short of the alcoholic rehabilitation that business adopted 20 or 30 years ago. Often companies refer addicts whom they fire to clinics or rehabilitation centers, where prospects for total recovery are dim. Public clinics and centers in New York City, for example, tend to concentrate on the needs of ghetto youths whose addiction is linked to deprivation and despair. The environment is often harsh for older, middle-class addicts and adds to their difficulty in readjustment. Says Donald Mahoney, a spokesman for New York Telephone Co.: "Seventy-five percent of our alcoholics eventually return to work, but our record of drug rehabilitation is zilch."

Some blame must be shared by the companies that summarily dismiss workers hooked on narcotics. Without income, the addict's chances of paying for effective private treatment are reduced, while the odds against his completing the program at free centers is heightened. One of the few firms to take an enlightened view of the addict's plight is New Jersey Bell Telephone, which began this year to pay disability money to employees undergoing treatment for drug use.

Eventually, business will have to take a more active role in aiding drug-dependent workers, helping to support adequately staffed treatment centers. Dr. Rosenthal of Phoenix House says: "Not until private industry realizes that the drug user is increasingly white, bright and productive is it likely to take a rehabilitative approach to drugs." The shortsighted effort to save money on rehabilitation may well prove increasingly costly to business in terms of lower output and lost careers.