Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!think!harvard!cmcl2!philabs!hhb!bcb From: bcb@hhb.UUCP (Bob BField) Newsgroups: net.jobs Subject: Drug Testing Message-ID: <143@hhb.UUCP> Date: Tue, 11-Mar-86 08:54:28 EST Article-I.D.: hhb.143 Posted: Tue Mar 11 08:54:28 1986 Date-Received: Sat, 15-Mar-86 19:02:04 EST Organization: HHB-Softron, Mahwah, NJ Lines: 94 :-) :-( :-) :-( :-) :-( :-) :-( :-) :-( :-) :-( :-) :-( :-) I recently heard on some AM news station that Our Friend E.D.S. conducts drug testing on some employees. This shows us just what kind of company concerns itself with such victimless crimes as the use of illegal substances. Another observation: Spalding Gray wrote in _Swimming to Cambodia_ of a conversation he had with a nuclear missile launcher. The button-pusher admitted to doing blue-flake cocaine because the Navy tests for marijuana, but not cocaine. Even though he toots on the job, he's always ready to nuke those ruskies back to the stone age. He's looking forward to it. The thing drug-free people don't understand about this new fanaticism to test for drugs, is that it resembles the way we behaved toward former members of the Communist Party during the 50's. Note how professional athletes must fess-up to their sins in public, denounce drugs, agree to future testing. Oh, what a day for an auto-da-fe'!* In the 50's, Hollywood communists had to publicly admit their Party membership, denounce the Communist Party as a National Security Threat, and prove their loyalty to America by naming fellow members (even though the F.B.I. had all the names). Does anyone remember Nancy's War-on-Drugs? She traveled around the country and the globe lecturing audiences on how drugs are bad. Does anyone remember those by-gone days when her husband, acting as President of the Screen Actor's Guild, told the public that the Guild would not participate in blacklisting? Of course, Guild members were required to have their names cleared with the American Foreign Legion as a simple, painless loyalty check. By this logic, our Acting President may soon decree that drug testing is an intolerable invasion of privacy, an unwarranted personal search, but that urinalysis is a good idea to ensure a healthy American workforce. I should not simplify this complicated issue. After all, Professional Sports is house-cleaning to improve its tarnished image. Drugs abounded among professional athletes for quite some time. News coverage of it is recent. Were it not for the Drug Scandal, testing would not be the problem that it is becoming. Another observation: Drug testing punishes drug users, not pushers. People who blow a joint, snort some lines, drop a pill, or down a shot every now and then do not damage our social fabric. People who abuse grass, cocaine, speed, alcohol to the point that it affects the way they function at work, do not damage our social fabric either. They are the rent in our social fabric that we wish to mend. Punishing severe drug abusers pushes them to more extensive abuse. They have more to escape from. We have a serious drug problem in America. Impoverished teenagers turn to drugs to escape their miserable lives. Drug abuse drags them down further. These are drugs' worst victims. Employers don't suffer from these abusers because these abusers are unemployed. They live in abandoned buildings, on streets, in pestilent tenements. They steal to support their habits. Punishing these hard-core abusers will not make the problem disappear. Nancy would like to solve the Drug Problem, but all she can do is stand before an audience to speak her mind. She is unable to stop the flow of drugs and alcohol. In the interim, her husband wants us taxpayers to help out Miami drug smugglers who seek to invade Nicaragua and Cuba. The Cuban Mafia adores his vicious anti-communism. Providing a promising future for poor teenagers would help. Reducing stress in the workplace would help. (I wonder how many EDS recruits are driven to drink. :-) Such remedies are out of the question because they are commie-inspired. American employers have the God-given right to rule with Authority. Poor Americans are poor because they are lazy. They don't want to work. Americanism is a sickness behind a sickness. Drug testing is a latter-day McCarthyism. Like its predecessor, it will cause much pain, suffering, drug and alcohol abuse before we really put our feet down to end it. Already, folks such as Keith Hernandez are afraid of standing up against testing because they fear that they will appear "soft on drugs". Think about this (I know not the source): A German reminisced that when the Nazi's took away the Communists and Socialists he didn't speak up because he was neither. When they came for the Jews, he didn't speak up because he wasn't Jewish. When they came for the Catholic and Protestant Clergy, he didn't speak up because he was neither. When they finally came for him, there was nobody left to speak up. _ Bob B-Field P.S. My employers do not test for drugs. If they did, there would be an exodus of the best and brightest. * An auto-da-fe' is an Inquisition witch trial (literally 'act-of-faith'). :-) :-( :-) :-( :-) :-( :-) :-( :-) :-( :-) :-( :-) :-( :-) These wandering opinions are purely my own. They do not reflect my employers in any way.