Posted on Nov 02, 2007 - 9:58am by Don Rogers in Health, Trucking

Easy for truckers to cheat drug tests
NBC news is running a story on drug usage by American truckers. The report is based on a GAO report that says that government agents were able to fool the system at some drug testing sites with fake I.D.s and synthetic urine.
From NBC:
Undercover investigators with the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, used bogus truck driver’s licenses to gain access to 24 drug-testing sites. They found that 75 percent “failed to restrict access to items that could be used to adulterate or dilute the [urine] specimen, meaning that running water, soap, or air freshener was available in the bathroom during the test.”
A DOT spokesman commented that driver errors, not drug use, caused most accidents. “Our efforts on this front have been critical in helping us reduce the number of large truck fatalities by nearly 5 percent last year — the largest decline in four years.”, a fact NBC conveniently left out of its on-air report. They also seem to assume that just because you can spoof the the system that we actually are. Most of the chemicals they show are things you would have to plan for, a pre-employment test, not one of the randoms that DOT requires.
Drugs and driving do not mix, if you feel you need to indulge in a little chemical recreation then you need to find another line of work. This goes for anyone with a job where others lives are at risk because you may not be on top of your game.
Be Safe;
Don Rogers
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Most labs will catch any adulteration or spoofing of your drug test and ANY evidence of tapering or spoofing is the same as failing.
Like the FMCSA mentions, they didn’t test drivers they tested the labs they went to and came up with a stupid conclusion. Anything to give a bad rap to drivers.
You beat me to it Don. I’ve made the full reports from the GAO available for download over on my site at these links
http://mexicotrucker.com/download/60 for the report you mentioned and at http://mexicotrucker.com/download/61 for the Preliminary Report.
I haven’t had the time to read either of these yet, but my questions would be
1. What labs were checked? Geographic location etc. Did they pick 24 labs in say the Jersey area or Chicago? Perhaps Southern Cal. With thousands of labs around the country, their numbers mean nothing.
I came into the office this afternoon and was tagged for a random. We use a chiropractor for DOT physicals and drug tests. He will even come to your home for the collection.
In and out in 5 minutes. No emptying of pockets nor any of the other B.S. And this guy is a collection point for more than a dozen testing labs.
Bottom line though, this report is not an indictment of truck drivers, whether they be Mexican, American or Canadian, but a call for the medical community to clean up their act.
But I think back to when the drug testing requirement went into effect. It seems to me there was a 10% failure rate out of the box. And after a few years, the rate dropped to <2% and has stayed there ever since.
Ya'll know I rarely agree with anything OOIDA says, but today is an exception. They have an excellent article on their website concerning this.
We have our own little problem here in Alabama. Its called Sand Mountain, or Meth Mountain as its been known for some time. There have been more meth labs there than anywhere in the state. The local county sheriffs office there couldn’t control it so the feds stepped in last month and busted some 50 people. more than a third were related or had some connection to truck drivers.
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I wrote a blog on this based on some research that I did into the reports. You can find it here if you are interested: http://www.hwyblogs.com/blog/truckintedybehr/b1731.php