Most alcoholics and illicit drug users hold jobs

Contrary to the popular image of the down-and-out unemployed drug or alcohol abuser, more than 70 percent of people who use illicit drugs or abuse alcohol hold down full- or part-time jobs, according to preliminary data from the 1996 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse (NHSDA).

That translates into 11 million employees, or 11 percent of the American work force, using illicit drugs or drinking heavily.

It?s no surprise that these workers increase employer health-care costs and decrease a company?s overall productivity. The 1994 NHSDA, for example, found that workers who use illicit drugs or drink heavily are more likely to have worked for three or more employers in the past year, taken an unexcused absence from work in the past month, voluntarily left an employer in the past year and been fired by an employer in the past year.

Businesses are responding to the problem by implementing drug-testing programs and other measures to combat company losses due to drug and alcohol abuse among employees, and they seem to work, according to several studies. For example, by 1997 the number of employee drug tests coming back positive at Smith-Kline Beecham have dropped by more than 70 percent since it started keeping records on its mandatory drug-testing program for employees in 1987. And McDonnell Douglas Corporation of St. Louis saved $5.1 million over three years in reduced medical claims and lowered absenteeism by providing employees with an Employee Assistance Program.

But more than half of all illicit drug users interviewed for the NHSDA work for small businesses, most of which do not provide drug testing or other antidrug programs, the survey found.

?B. Azar