In a classic cause of a few bad apples ruining the barrel, drug testing practices for regulated employees are about to become stricter as a terminate of recent modifications by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT). 

On Wednesday, June 25, the DOT issued reinvigorated drug testing regulations in what amounts to the most eminently expressive overtake of the transportation industry drug and alcohol rules (codified at 49 CFR Part 40) since 2001.

The DOT frames this make some change in. as addressing “specimen validity,” and includes various mandatory tests and changes to the rules on adulterant testing, notwithstanding truly the most significant change for employers and collectors is that distant more urine specimen collections must be in a straight course observed. Commencing through the control’s effective date, August 25, 2008, all return-to-work and follow-up urine collections must be observed collections. 

In the preamble to the new final rule, the DOT acknowledges that the Omnibus Transportation Employee Testing Act directs the DOT to use procedures that “promote, to the maximum extent practicable, individual privacy in the collection of specimen samples,” the agency specified however, that given the vast and extending numbers of products designed and marketed to beat urine unsalable article tests, “the measure of the sort of is the maximum extent of privacy has shifted somewhat.”

The new rule will require employees “to raise their shirts, blouses, or dresses/skirts above the middle part, and glower their pants and underpants, to show the observer, by turning around, that they do not have a prosthetic device on their character. After this is done, they may return their garments to its proper position,” and produce a specimen “in such a manner that the observer can see the urine exiting directly from the individual into the collection container.”

The DOT points out that immediately, observed collections (which currently require no disarrangement of clothes and which are conducted by same-sex collectors) are required only of people who have given the collector reason to believe they have tampered with a proof. The addition of directory observed collections for return-to-work and follow-up tests–required of workers who have tested positive for a prohibited drug in the past–are clearly designed to target those transportation workers principally likely to have resumed illegal drug use, and to this degree have the greatest interest in ensuring a negative test result by whatever means necessary.

Although the new rules may seem draconian in nature, the DOT’s action follows a number of well-publicized events calling into question the current rules’ ability to weed out mix with drugs abusers. In May 2008, a report released by dint of. the Government Accounting Office in succession the drug and alcohol testing program administered by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration cited as a significant concern the widespread availability of adulterants, automatic delivery devices and synthetic urine as effective to mask evidence of substance abuse. One source estimated that as people adulterated specimens as positive specimens are received. A study conducted roadside on anonymous truckers by the Oregon State Police last emerge found that one in ten tested precise notwithstanding a banned substance. Last fall, the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Infrastructure and Transportation held Subcommittee hearings that revealed widespread problems with collectors who were not implementing the DOT regulations correctly. It’s plain to see why regulators be in possession of concluded that privacy mores mould “shift.”

Employers have approximately one month to reform. their policies to reflect the renovated regulatory requirements, and ensure that their managers and collectors are trained to implement them correctly. Employers who are not subject to DOT regulation, but who, nonetheless, model their drug and alcohol testing program for non-regulated employees on the DOT regulations should beware; many states bar observed collections, making it more of great weight than ever that employers accurately distinguish between which tests are employer-mandated and which are required by federal order.

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