Drug test failures are rising, lab says

CHICAGO -- Employees increasingly are testing positive for marijuana, cocaine and amphetamines at work, driving the rates of positive drug tests in the United States to the highest level in 12 years, a leading lab services company reported Tuesday.

Quest Diagnostics, based in Madison, N.J., released its annual nationwide analysis of more than 10 million workforce drug-test results.

It showed that 4.2 percent of drug tests were positive last year, up from 4 percent the year before and the highest rate since 2004, when it was 4.5 percent.

The rate of positive drug tests in the nation's workforce remains far lower than the nearly 14 percent rate the United States faced when Quest started the annual report in 1988. But after declining for more than two decades, the rate of positive results has been climbing since 2012.

"It's pretty alarming," said Dr. David Fletcher, a medical review officer and founder of SafeWorks Illinois in Champaign, which analyzes drug tests for employers. His company was not involved in Quest's analysis. But Quest's statistics reflect what Fletcher sees in his practice, he said.

Driving the increase are positive tests for marijuana, which hit 2 percent last year and have grown steadily from about 1.6 percent in 2012. For workers federally mandated to be tested because they hold safety-sensitive positions, such as pilots and bus and truck drivers, positive marijuana tests grew to 0.78 percent from 0.73 percent.

Colorado and Washington, the first states to legalize recreational marijuana, have experienced particularly large increases in positive test results and now exceed the national average, but they still lag far behind Oregon, which has the highest rate of positive marijuana tests at 3.9 percent. It is followed by Vermont and Maine.

Positive tests for cocaine also have increased, for the fourth consecutive year in the general workforce and the second year for safety-sensitive workers. Texas, South Carolina and North Carolina had the highest rates of positive cocaine tests.

Positive tests for amphetamines, which include methamphetamines as well as prescription drugs such as Adderall, rose more than 8 percent in both the general and safety-sensitive workforces compared with 2015.

A heartening trend in the drug test data is a decline in prescription opiates, including hydrocodone and oxycodones, which Quest attributes to tightened controls.

However, tighter controls on prescription opioids might be driving some people to turn to heroin, Fletcher said. Positive workplace heroin tests increased for four years, then held steady last year among the general workforce and declined slightly among workers in safety-sensitive positions.

Business on 05/17/2017

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