THE FIRESTONE "STUDY"

Obviously, statements concerning the job performance of drug users have an impact on their employers. From the earliest days of the debate, a series of statistics about drug-using workers, their poor productivity, and high cost to ther company have been presented. In one of the first proceedings of a meeting directed to the issues of drug abuse in the workplace, Robert Angarola and Judith Brunton stated:

A recent study....suggests that drug users were almost four times as likely to be involved in a plant accident and were two and one-half times as likely to be absent from work for more than a week than employees who did not use drugs. Drug users were five times as likely to file workers' compensation claims and they received three times the average level of sick benefits. (1) Further, the drug users were repeatedly involved in grievance procedures." The Angarola-Brunton document was published in 1984 but they and others had begun making the remarks frequently by then

In 1987 testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives, by Mark de Bernardo of the United States Chamber of Commerce:

'Recreational' drug users are:

2.2 times more likely to request early dismissal or time off...

3.6 times more likely to injure themselves or another person in a workplace accident

5.0 times more likely to file a worker's compensation claim. (3)

For at least five years, these statistics and others like them have been voiced and published by testing advocates, although seldom with de Bernardo's decimal-point precision. Those whom I have quoted seem to be referring to any user of illegal drugs and de Bernardo specifically speaks of recreational drug user. Yet, one might wonder how these data were gathered, particularly since drug testing in the workplace is proposed to uncover the secret user. How were these users described by Angarola and de Bernardo (and many others) found and analyzed? The answer, as is often the case is simple. They were not.

The most important source for dissemination of these statistics seems to be the Drug Abuse and Alcoholism Newsletter of Dr. Sidney Cohen. (4) This monthly newsletter is widely distributed and has been collected and published. In the August 1983 newsletter, Cohen discussed a study by the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company and constructed the quotable statements which have appeared and reappeared: "Drug users were five times as likely to file a Workers' Compensation claim, and they received three times the average level of sick benefits." (5)

The Firestone "Study" has never been published. Thus, Cohen's newsletter seems to be the source of all such statements. Yet, Cohen gave no attribution nor sources, and when I wrote to him in 1985 he answered that he did not have a copy of the study and suggested I write Firestone. After a number of calls and queries I received a two page document from Firestone's Medical Director, E. Gates Morgan. The report aPpears to be an in-house newsletter. (6) In it, a Mr. Ed Johnson is interviewed about the Employer Assistance Program ("EAP") at Firestone. There are some statements pertaining to absenteeism, but these are not documented, and more importantly, refer only to a few alcoholics who have been served by the Firestone EAP. The statistics generated (if these calculations based on alcoholics were actually made) have nothing to do with drug users, recreational or otherwise.

The statistics cited about absenteeism and workers' compensation claims may have been derived from interviews with alcoholic workers enrolled in the EAP at Firestone. These people were not identified by urine testing for alcohol, but were referred because they or others perceived that their lives were falling apart. They, unlike workers randomly tested for drug use, were dysfunctional. To use them as a justification for testing unimpaired workers is like demanding that all workers have mandatory periodic rectal temperatures taken because a case of tuberculosis was found in the workplace.