Importance Of Choosing Reliable Drug Test Kits For Workplace Testing

By Author: Nate Rodney
Total Articles: 499
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Drug abuse among workforce is a serious problem in the United States. According to National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), 67% of drug users aged 18 or older were employed, either full-time (48%) or part-time (19%) in 2009.

Drug abuse leads to issues such as increased absenteeism, increased medical claims and ultimately productivity declines. This leads to larger expenses for the employer on healthcare, workplace issues, etc. Therefore, it is important for employers to prevent the issue by undertaking workplace drug testing by using reliable drug test kits. Here, we emphasize reliability of the test kits. This is because not all drug test kits give optimal results. We will discuss in this article the importance of choosing reliable drug test kits for workplace testing.

Why drug test at workplace?
It is sensible for employers to administer drug testing at workplace for the following reasons:

To protect the employer:
Employers are responsible for the safety of their employees at workplace. Therefore, they have to take the responsibility of expenses (rising worker's compensation ...
... issue, medical expenses, litigation, etc.) because of drug abusing employees. Conducting drug tests at workplace will avoid these issues.

For better recruiting:
Workplace drug testing prevents drug abusing applicants from entering the workplace. This will ensure a drug free environment at workplace. The employer will have peace of mind and can concentrate on other activities of the organization.

To ensure healthy work environment:
Drug testing at workplace acts as a deterrent against employees abusing drugs, and thus they are unlikely to use them and come to workplace. This helps create a healthy work environment.

To protect from liability issues:
Drug testing kits help employers prevent issues such as lawsuits that occur in the event of an accident or serious crime by the drug abusers.

To avoid workplace accidents:
According to the American Council for Drug Education, employees abusing drugs are more likely to face workplace accidents (about 3.6 times) and are more likely (five times) to get injured. Using drug test kits as a matter of policy, employers can prevent such accidents.

To ensure productivity:
According to the American Council for Drug Education, drug abusers are 33% less productive. Further, National Drug Intelligence Center estimates lost productivity due to drug abuse at $120 billion (for 2007).

Drug testing at workplace keeps employees away from illicit drugs, and makes sure that they are in good health, and are more productive.

Why is it important to choose only reliable drug test kits?

Today, there are many drug test kits available in the market. But only few are reliable. While buying these kits, make sure it is SAMHSA approved and follows FDA cut-off levels. Choose drug testing kits that bring immediate and on-site results.

Risk of using low quality products: Low quality drug kits will affect the credibility of drug test kits. Following are the risks of using low quality drug testing kits:

False positive results:
This type of result generally occurs when the drug test kit is influenced by drugs that employee has taken as part of medication for a health condition.

Consequences of false positive results:
The employee may feel embarrassed in front of his fellow employees and this may in turn affect his work and career. The employer unnecessarily will have to spend hundreds of dollars to send the sample to the laboratory, which is of no use. It also affects the organization's reputation. Therefore, it is sensible enough to choose quality/reliable drug kits that show low rate of false positive results.

False negative results:
This type of result occurs when the drug that the employee has taken is not detected by the drug kit used on the employee. There are different reasons for false negative results such as, level of the drug the employee has taken is too low for the drug test kit to identify, the employee has added adulterants to his sample or the drug is not reacting as it should be. False negative results are likely to lead to wrong decision making.

Choose reliable drug test kits: Employers should buy reliable drug kits from manufacturers following FDA norms and SAMHSA.

Employers are responsible for the safety and morale at workplace. To keep the workplace free from the influence of illicit substances, employers should undertake workplace drug testing using reliable drug test kits. This will be in the greater interests of the employer as well as the employee.

DrugTestStrips.com is an online store offering reliable, accurate, easy to use and FDA approved drug test kits at affordable prices. Our multi panel drug test kits can be used to detect multiple drugs without the use of an additional instrument and without the need of having to use test kits multiple times. To learn more, visit - www.drugteststrips.com