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From: cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,alt.drugs
Subject: Koop on drug testing in the workplace
Message-ID: <51002@bbn.COM>
Date: 16 Jan 90 23:09:09 GMT
Sender: news@bbn.COM
Reply-To: cosell@BBN.COM (Bernie Cosell)
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Organization: BBN Systems and Technologies, Inc, Cambridge MA
Lines: 42

I'm shattered.  One of my heroes, former Surgeon-General Koop, is
actively encouraging employers to begin drug testing their employees
[and is involved in get a bill passed that would standardize such tests
and give employers guidelines on how to conduct them in a "suit proof"
fashion].

On an interview on NPR, he referred several times to the notion that
employers should do this for the employee's own good --- even in
circumstances where he agreed it makes no difference at all to the
employer or to the employee's performance on the job.  He was esposing
this intrusion into the employees life because *HE* thinks it will be
"for the persons own good" [a catch phrase that almost always covers
shoddy thinking], and that this is an important thing to do because it
_might_ turn into a full-scale, life-ruining addiction, or it _might_
cause a real degradation in the employee's quality of work.

How sad.  Koop is so popular, and they're approaching this so diagonally
[he's trying to help Orrin Hatch get a "federal standards for drug testing"
bill pushed through], that he may well pull it off.  After that it will be
VERY hard to stop, since it has now been defined to be "not an intrusion" to
require that employees pass regular drug tests.  How very very sad for us
all.  I wonder if the next thing will be to require that we get our teeth
checked every six months, and if there'll be a vigilante squad to come by my
house and insure that I'm tucked into bed at an 'approved' hour so that I get
my rest and I'm not too tired the next day... couldn't have me sleepy on the
job, now, right????

GRRRRRRRRRRRR.....

And even MORE worse (if you can believe that), is that Koop isn't doing this
because he wants to further the war on drugs.  He's doing it because he
thinks it is RIGHT... that is, his paternalistic view of what the all-knowing
benevolent employer should be doing to help look out for and help the poor,
ignorant, bumbling employee includes these sorts of intrusions into the
employee's lives.  What is this world coming to????

I wonder why Koop has abandoned using the force of his personality and
the force of logic, which seemed to be doing just fine and at the least
garnered *MY* attention and respect, and instead is stooping to use the
crude tools of force and coercion?

  /Bernie\