My friend just graduated, but there’s one more test she has to pass before entering the working world. Unlike most college tests, this one involves pee. Taking a drug test is increasingly a rite of passage from college to real life. My friend has been known to indulge… well, let’s just say it: She’s a big stoner and is freaking out trying to beat the damn thing.We took the obligatory trip to Waterbeds and Stuff, which brings together the strange combo of waterbeds and smoking paraphernalia. Has anyone ever actually bought a waterbed there?The sales boy was a paranoid fellow (go figure) and pleaded ignorance when asked what the best product was for beating pee tests. He did, however, have a few recommendations on products to “cleanse toxins” from your system, of which the store had an abundance.For $30, my friend bought a bottle of some weird elixir that guaranteed if drunk several hours before a pee test, it would mask any drug use or double the money back. Little comfort if her job is lost and life is ruined, but you take what you can get.Drug testing is a major industry, with big bucks being made on both sides of the aisle. The Twinsburg-based Zenza is making money on the bad-guy side. In true Twinsburg style, they have their own Winnebago that travels to companies to do on-the-spot drug testing.Their web site is most frightening: “If you are not sure if what your employees are doing on their own time might be costing your company money, consider the following: 72 percent of the world`s produced illegal drugs are bought and consumed in the U.S. About 70 percent of illegal drug users are employed. About 17 percent of all employed persons are drug users. Each employee with a drug abuse problem costs an employer close to $7,000 a year.”Zenza presumably intended these stats to promote testing, but they just show drugs are as American as apple pie. The key words in the last statement are “abuse” and “problem,” which denotes something a little more serious than someone smoking a joint after a long day at work.But that’s all it takes to cost a lot of people their jobs. Federal law requires anyone with a commercial driver’s license to be randomly drug tested, and that’s probably a good thing. Buses and bullet trains are hard to operate while passing a pipe.But in Ohio, other employers aren’t legally bound but are financially persuaded to be body Nazis. Businesses can save up to 20 percent on their workers’ compensation premiums by drug testing employees.The claim is that drug and alcohol testing reduces the number of accidents in the workplace, thus reducing the number of workers’ compensation claims. Which may be true for, say Schottenstein Center crane operators, but defies logic when it comes to the many pencil-pushing jobs that now drug test.Giving pee to your employer is a little much when you’re applying to Nationwide Insurance, a local employer that tests. It gets even scarier with the big boys like General Motors, that does hair tests. While urine tests can go back up to a month, one and a half inches of hair gives a 90-day drug history. Thankfully for my friend, her employer just wants pee, because she’d look awfully funny with a shaved head.It all makes for a more paranoid nation, a nation where employees’ rights to even their own bodily fluids are superseded by business, but not a drug-free nation. Even with a hair test, there’s a shampoo on the market said to guarantee passage.But even if you beat a test, something is lost. The precedent set is that you are property, owned by your employer. The money you make can’t buy that back.
Nathan Crabbe is a junior from Akron who suggests you celebrate your freedom while you still have it by rolling a fatty with this column. His radio show airs 7 p.m. tonight on the student-run station.
