drug/alcohol testing policy: effective?

"Chip Jones" wrote in message
k.net...
[...]
This guy I know started smoking cannabis in college. He enjoyed it so
much
and so often that he started losing control of the direction his life was
going in. As you might expect, he soon saw falling school grades, low
energy, no motivation, etc., the classic results of habitual pot use.

Those are the classic results of ANY lifestyle abuse. Any number of other
things can have the exact same result. Computer games, pornography, and
even scientific research have all been known to cause the exact same kind of
"drop out" behavior. Last I checked, none of those things are disallowed
for pilots.

More importantly, there is absolutely no evidence that *generally* habitual
pot use leads to the things you describe. Certain individuals are
susceptible to falling into a rut like that, but lots of habitual pot users
have no such problems, just as lots of habitual computer gamers, scientists,
and porn aficionados have no such problems.

You are trying to extrapolate to all people based on your knowledge of a
single individual. There's just no basis for that kind of extrapolation,
and it would be absurd to make rules based on a single individual.

[...]
Somewhere along the way, this guy realized just how damn bad drugs are for
building a person's character.

Drugs aren't meant to build character. Why would you expect them to be?
And more importantly, there are plenty of other legal activities that are
similarly not useful for "building a person's character". Why should
everything a person does be good for building a person's character, and what
possible justification does our government have for mandating that a person
engage only in things that are good for building character?

Like every controller I know, this guy would
tell you that people who make their living in aviation safety related
fields, say pilots who fly under Part 121 or Part 135, or mechanics, or
air
traffic controllers, should be randomly drug tested *often*. It's an air
safety thing.

It's not a safety thing. It's a money thing. Even before drug testing,
it's a pretty sure bet that more pilots flew while drunk than while high on
pot. And yet, what testing is being sold? Drug testing.

If it were really a safety thing, the focus would be on alcohol abuse.

You don't want unmotivated, low-energy, maybe high-as-a-kite
folks playing around with airplanes that will be carrying passengers.

I don't want drunk pilots playing around with airplanes that will be
carrying passengers either. But no one seems to be cracking down on that.

The
problem with drugs is that you can't always know when a person is high, or
when drug use is affecting critical safety skills like judgment or
coordination.

This is true of the drug known as alcohol as well.

No matter what the rate of positive on a random test is among
this group of aviation professionals, the air safety goal has to be zero
tol
erance for drug use.

Drug use while flying, yes. Drug use generally? No...it has nothing to do
with air safety whatsoever. Drug testing does not distinguish between the
two.

Random testing in the field of professional aviation is a necessary evil.
I
firmly believe that even if we completely legalize pot someday for the
masses, we will still have to maintain a zero-tolerance random drug
testing
policy or else air safety will suffer.

There is absolutely no evidence to support your theory, and plenty of
evidence in contrary to it.

Pete

On Wed, 15 Dec 2004 18:25:36 GMT, "Chip Jones"
wrote in
t::

The
problem with drugs is that you can't always know when a person is high, or
when drug use is affecting critical safety skills like judgment or
coordination.

You're probably right about detecting impaired judgment, but physical
coordination can be measured:
http://isc.temple.edu/pe204/HandCorrelationReport.htm

gatt wrote:

"G.R. Patterson III" wrote in message

I'm not on any sort of test plan, so testing is not a factor.

Are you a commecial pilot? If so, how does that work?

Nope, I'm a private pilot. In the late 60s and early 70s I used a variety of
drugs. By mid-'73, I didn't smoke pot very frequently 'cause I didn't like the
lethargy. In '74, however, I got married to a woman who was pretty habituated to
marijuana. She got wrecked every night and really got upset if I didn't
participate.

After we broke up, I went back to school. I stayed straight because I needed a
good head to get the grades -- besides, I could barely afford food. After that,
I went to work for a company that has a zero tolerance on drugs and crime. I
wasn't about to lose my job and possessions and take prison time for smoking
reefer, much less any of the more esoteric stuff I tried in my 20s. My company
didn't test for drugs, so I was really just concerned about the possibility of
arrest. I also needed to keep a good head for my work, so I'm not sure I
would've smoked much if it had been legal.

George Patterson
The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.

"Jim Fisher" wrote in message news:M3%

I applaud your choice to remain as chemical free as possible, Chris. But
calling alcohol "poison" is hyperbole and ignorant and makes you sound
like
my mother-in-law.

They interviewed some 100+ year-old here in the northwest several years ago
for television. The young reporter asked the old man to impart his secret
to longevity:

"Weeelllll," the old man said, citing exercise, wholesome living, the usual,
and then: "Every day I drink a glass of my own urine!"

I admire the fellow; he lived a lot longer than I will!

-gatt
PP-ASEL-IA got my new Wright Brothers license in the mail. WOOHOO!!

"Peter Duniho"
"Jim Fisher" wrote in message

Comment (and pardon the top post):

The type of exchange usually happens when you mix a government-as-nanny
liberal with a right (correct) thinking libertarian. The former uses some
personal experience and some shoddy reasoning to conclude that any
recreational drug use "is bad for you" and "more-than-occaisional drug use
is a sever character flaw". The proposed solution is to invade the privacy
of everyone. However, as the other poster correctly implies, the evidence
that recreational drug use away from the job is related to accidents is
lacking. If and when there is hard data on this, meaning lives are being
endangered (on the job), then most people would agree that government
intervention is necessary. There are other "character flaws", like a
penchant for risk-taking, that should be of more concern than recreational
drug use. And how about overly religious pilots? Remember that?

moo

Quitting something that is bad for you because of rules that were imposed
on me was a bad idea?

Yes. A non-idiotic approach to the issue would be to base one's decision
on quitting on real facts, not some economically-motivated rule-making.

I'd bet a whole dollar that there's a jillion former pot-heads flying
today who quit because of drug testing.

A jillion you say? Uh, right. Whatever. I'd bet a lot more than a
dollar that the number is well below that, and in any case I'm not really
concerned about pot-heads flying, as long as they aren't under the
influence while flying. What do I care whether they quit or not?

A held that stance years ago. Now I realize that more-than-occaisional
drug use is a sever character flaw and not a flaw I want in a Captain or
FO.

I disagree that even "more-than-occasional drug use" is necessarily a
problem, as long as that drug use doesn't occur when it would interfere
with a person's obligations. But nevertheless, your qualification of
"more-than-occasional drug use" is not observed by drug testing. Even
occasional users will get strung up by it.

Then we will agree to disagree.

Indeed.

Pete

C J Campbell wrote:
Takes one hell of a lot of popyseeds to test posotive.

A single bagel or muffin can cause you to test positive and there are
people
who have lost their jobs because of it. Because of this the drug test
is
being revised.

Yeah, it's been in the process of being revised for years. You can
keep revising until the cows come home, but until you're willng to
spend hundreds of dollars per test, the problem won't go away.

You see, drug testing is hard. It's sort of like doing oil analysis
(another practice I don't put much faith in) - you're trying to detect
tiny concentrations of stuff you care about in an organic fluid that
has been where the sun don't shine.

I don't know how much experience the rest of you have with this, but
I've actually done these analyses (both the kinds used for oil analysis
and the kinds used for drug testing) in an actual chemical laboratory
with my own actual hands (required lab course in my engineering
program), so let me share with you some of the pitfalls involved:

First off, when you're dealing with tiny quantities, everything must be
clean. Absolutely, positively, scrupulously clean. Breathe in the
wrong place, use a bit of the wrong soap, omit a calibration step, make
a minor error - and your results are garbage. A real world trace
analysis is usually multiple steps - and every one of them has to be
right every time. Second, you have to know what you are looking for
and what else can be there. Analytical chemistry is the process of
elimination. You can never really eliminate everything - that's what
makes field samples such a challenge. That's also what causes a single
poppyseed bagel to trigger a false positive for heroin. Kitchen
poppies and opium poppies are close relatives, and there is no simple
test to tell the digestive products of the two apart reliably in trace
quantities.

Another outrage is people who have too much water in their urine have
lost
their jobs because it was presumed they were attempting to disguise
their
drug use by drinking water. Of course, many diets encourage water
drinking
and flight crew in particular should drink lots of water to avoid the
dangers of dehydration.

The actual reason is keratinides. These are breakdown products
normally found in urine in certain concentrations. Excessive liquid
consumption will reduce their concentrations below normal levels, and
little else will. Low keratinine content is a pretty reliable
indicator that someone has been drinking a lot of liquids (not
necessarily water) and not sweating too much - meaning the kidneys are
working overtime. It's not likely to happen unless the person is
intentionally drinking a lot, but as you mentioned certain diets
encourage this and it's also considered proper for those working in a
very low humidity environment. The "problem" with this is that it can
cause the already diluted breakdown products of certain drugs consumed
days ago (most notably cannabis) to be diluted to such a low level that
the test won't work. This won't actually work if the person has enough
of the drug in his system to be actively impaired or if he has a very
high concentration due to chronic use, but it works pretty reliably if
the person is only an occasional user who has been clean for a couple
of days or more. Why we should care that the person is an occasional
user who last used days ago has never been adequately explained.

The bottom line is that ACCURATE drug testing (the sort that determines
the individual is currently impaired, and not fooled by poppyseed
muffins and who knows what else) is EXPENSIVE. Unfortunately, we do
not hold the drug labs liable for their errors. If they were not
protected from liability from their mistakes, they would soon go out of
business and the problem would solve itself.

Michael

"Chip Jones" wrote in message news:Ak%vd.213

Random testing in the field of professional aviation is a necessary evil.
I
firmly believe that even if we completely legalize pot someday for the
masses, we will still have to maintain a zero-tolerance random drug
testing
policy or else air safety will suffer.

It's interesting that marijuana keeps coming up in this discussion. It's the
most benign of them all, impairing people less even than alcohol. According
to a drug testing link somebody forwarded, methamphetamine use is coming up
pretty dramatically (44% increase in positive test results in the last
year?!)

I agree, though, that if pot (as an example) were legalized, it still
wouldn't belong in the cockpit. But, test for it? Do they test for the
presence of perfectly legal drugs like Benadryl which, arguably, would pose
a more severe handicap to a pilot?

I'd rather ride with a guy who smoked pot last week or went on a bender
three days ago at a bachelor party than a guy who's about to fall asleep at
the yoke because he took Benadryl two or three hours ago.

-c

"Peter Duniho" wrote in message

Computer games, pornography, and even scientific research have all been
known to cause the exact same kind of "drop out" behavior. Last I
checked, none of those things are disallowed for pilots.

So a guy I know who's a sociology professor and researcher at a major
university, who smokes pot, plays video games, drinks beer and surfs and
occasional porn site probably shouldn't become a pilot... [Answer, in his
case: True]

More importantly, there is absolutely no evidence that *generally*
habitual
pot use leads to the things you describe. Certain individuals are
susceptible to falling into a rut like that, but lots of habitual pot
users
have no such problems, just as lots of habitual computer gamers,
scientists,
and porn aficionados have no such problems.

Absolutely agree. I know habitual long-time pot smokers and computer gamers
who have been successfully employed for decades--in one case, 23 years--who
have college degrees, careers. Profs, lawyers, engineers, programmers,
insulators. I know others who don't have those vices at all and, for
example, work for those people.

When I was a magazine editor some of the most productive and least
expendable members of the staff were pot smokers. I had to fire a few
people who weren't 'cause they just didn't have the ambition to meet
deadlines, check facts, report accurately...show up...

Of course, for each of those I remember a friend or schoolmate that was a
burnout by the time he graduated from high school, and is still working at a
warehouse or plant somewhere for minimum wage.

-c

"G.R. Patterson III" wrote in message

I got married to a woman who was pretty habituated to
marijuana.

As a musician I've played with groups who had habitual pot users in them (I
won't play with drunks or hard-drug users.) One time a couple of years ago,
in England, the bass player confided in me that the four days he'd been in
the UK was the longest he'd gone without smoking pot since he was ELEVEN
YEARS OLD!

He's also a construction contractor for a major printer company. Showed me
his "Certified Drug Free" card after he passed his drug test a couple of
years ago. Guy's 40. His house is three times as big as mine, his daughter
is a champion equestrian who just started college, his son is studying
robotics and plays football in high school.

Having said that, there have been a couple of times where drug or alcohol
consumption has negatively influenced a recording session or a concert. No
way in hell those guys would make a good pilots.

-c

"Peter Duniho" wrote in message
...
"Jim Fisher" wrote in message
news
Quitting something that is bad for you because of rules that were imposed
on me was a bad idea?

Yes. A non-idiotic approach to the issue would be to base one's decision
on quitting on real facts, not some economically-motivated rule-making.

You might be surprised that most of us are motivated by money. Works for
me, anyway.

Besides, I didn't know I was an idiot at the time. Thought I was pudy
smart, actually.

I'm not really concerned about pot-heads flying, as long as they aren't
under the influence while flying. What do I care whether they quit or
not?

Never smoked the stuff, have ya? Good for you, man. If you *did* smoke it,
you'd know that pot (and lots of other stuff) affects you during and well
after partaking of it. Tell your name to just about any long-term pot
smoker. Even if 's not stoned, he won't remember it next time he meets you.

Do I really have to explain the dangers of short-term memory loss to a
pilot, Bill, er, Roger, er, glancing at header oh yeah, Pete? Not to
mention the fact that a commercial pilot who performs an illegal act on a
habitual basis has no place in the cockpit, man!


--
Jim Fisher