A refusal is one of the most misunderstood moments in a workplace testing program. Most employers think of a positive result as the hard case and a refusal as the simple one. In practice, a refusal is often messier to document, because it isn’t a lab finding. It’s a judgment call about behavior, made in […]
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Return-to-Duty Testing: What Employers Need to Know After a Positive Result
When an employee fails a DOT drug or alcohol test, refuses to test, or otherwise violates federal drug and alcohol regulations, the consequences do not end with the result itself. Before that person can return to any safety-sensitive duty, for any employer, they have to go through a specific, federally defined process. For many employers, […]
Can CBD Products Cause a Positive Drug Test? What Employers Should Know
CBD products are everywhere now, in gas stations, pharmacies, grocery stores, and wellness shops. Employees use them for sleep, for muscle soreness, for anxiety, often without thinking of them as anything close to a drug. So when an employee fails a drug test and says “it must have been the CBD oil,” employers are often […]
Can Secondhand Smoke Cause a Positive Drug Test? What Employers Should Know
Every drug testing program eventually runs into the same question from an employee who tests positive for marijuana: “I don’t smoke, but I was around people who did. Could that be why?” It’s a reasonable thing to wonder, and it’s a question HR and compliance teams should be able to answer with more than a […]
What Makes a Drug Test Result Hold Up When Questioned
A positive drug test result rarely goes unquestioned. An employee disputes it, a union representative asks for the paperwork, or an arbitrator wants to know exactly how the result was produced before accepting it as grounds for termination. When that happens, the question an employer actually has to answer is not “was the person using […]
Post-Accident Drug Testing: Getting the Timing and Process Right
When something goes wrong on the job, whether it’s a delivery truck accident or an injury on a warehouse floor, the minutes and hours right after matter more than most employers realize. Post-accident drug testing is one of the most commonly misapplied pieces of a workplace testing program, not because employers don’t care about doing […]
Random Workplace Drug Testing Programs: What Employers Should Know
Random testing is one of the few pieces of a drug testing program that is designed to work precisely because employees cannot predict it. Unlike pre-employment or post-accident testing, which are triggered by a specific event, random testing runs on an ongoing basis with no announcement and no obvious pattern. That unpredictability is the entire […]
What Determines How Long Drugs Stay Detectable in the Body?
Ask five different people how long a drug stays in your system and you’ll likely get five different answers, and all of them might be technically correct. That’s because detection time isn’t a fixed number attached to a substance. It’s the result of several variables interacting at once, and the same drug can show up […]
How Long Does Marijuana Stay in Your System?
A clear look at why marijuana’s detection window varies so widely, what actually drives that variation, and why detection isn’t the same thing as impairment.
Pre-Employment Drug Screening: What Employers Need to Know
A practical look at how employers build a consistent, defensible pre-employment drug screening program, from policy and panel selection to handling non-negative results fairly.
