DRUG-TEST POSITIVES RISING AS LABOR POOL TIGHTENS UP

Illegal drugs are a big problem for Garry M. Ritzky: too many of his job
applicants use them. Ritzky, risk and human resources director for Turner
Brothers Trucking Inc., a transportation and oil services company in
Oklahoma City, is having a hard time finding candidates who are clean of
cocaine, marijuana and heroin.

`We have an oil pipe operation that uses unskilled laborers, and we're
seeing more positive drug tests,'' he said. ``We had three last week.'' The
number of positive drug tests among applicants for low-skilled jobs at
Turner Brothers has doubled in the last year, Ritzky added.

Such evidence, while mostly anecdotal, runs counter to the decline in
positive tests most businesses have seen the last decade. Yet with the
unemployment rate at a 25-year low and the economy continuing to grow, more
human resource managers say they are starting to see a small but disturbing
increase in the number of job applicants who fail screening for drug and
alcohol abuse.

One reason for that increase, they say, is that as the supply of potential
employees continues to shrink, those with drug and alcohol problems
probably represent a larger portion of the labor pool.

Some also say a number of products now available to beat drug tests are
encouraging some job applicants to take chances. And marijuana, they say,
is again in vogue.

Passing Grades Rare

According to a study released late last year by the National Household
Survey on Drug Abuse, 16 percent of unemployed people used illicit drugs in
1994.

When the data was collected, unemployment was at 6.1 percent. Today, with
unemployment at 4.7 percent, qualified job seekers are harder to find.

``Employers are finding it harder to find people who are not using drugs,''
said James G. Lipari, public health adviser for the federal government's
Center for Substance Abuse Prevention. ``Since there are more employers
using testing and other prevention means, there are more people who are
unemployed for that reason, which makes the pool of unemployed who are
using drugs great.''

But these apparent trends are not yet reflected in the data. When drug
testing first became widespread, in the late 1980s, about 18 percent of the
tests showed signs of drug use, according to SmithKline Beecham Clinical
Laboratories, one of the nation's largest drug-testing labs. That number,
which represents mostly screening of applicants and a small amount of tests
for workers already on the job, fell steadily, to 8.8 percent in 1991, and
then began to decline more slowly. In 1996, about 5.8 percent of the tests
showed signs of drugs.

``Over the past 10 years, we've seen a dramatic decrease in positive
tests,'' said Thomas Johnson, a spokesman for SmithKline Beecham. The lab
is expected to release the results for 1997 in the next few weeks. ``Early
indications are that they will continue to decline,'' Johnson said.

One drug that is coming back, however, is marijuana. Of the people who
failed the SmithKline drug test in 1996, almost 60 percent had traces of
marijuana in their urine. That is up from 52 percent from 1995.

Marijuana use was in the spotlight two weeks ago when Canadian snowboarder
Ross Rebagliati had his Olympic gold medal withdrawn after he failed a drug
test.

Rebagliati said he had not smoked marijuana since April 1997 and that any
residue in his urine was from second-hand smoke With somewhat
less-than-clear Olympic rules on the penalty for marijuana use, he was
later allowed to keep the medal.

Accuracy Challenged

The accuracy of drug tests has been questioned by groups including the
Society for Human Resource Management, based in Alexandria, Va. It says
data provided by companies like SmithKline Beecham, while accurately
reflecting a downward rend, must be taken with a grain of salt. ``Some
people have since learned to beat the system,'' said Barry Lawrence, a
spokesman for the society.

Several companies advertise on the Internet, for example, selling products
to cover up traces of drugs in urine or hair. One company, Test Clean Drug
Testing Solutions in Oklahoma City, boasts that its product, Klear, which
can be bought for as little as $30, ``is the smallest, most potent,
undetectable urine purifier sold today.''

Johnson of SmithKline acknowledged, ``It's like a cat-and-mouse game.''

Catching On To Tricks

But, he said, laboratories are catching on and are starting to test for
those adulterants as well.

Most experts agree that drug testing has cut drug and alcohol abuse in the
workplace, but its greatest impact is on casual users.

``It eliminated use among individuals who could stop, who had more at stake
and didn't want to lose that,'' said Ellen Weber, director of national
policy for the Legal Action Center, a non-profit group based in New York
that is involved in drug, alcohol and HIV employment issues. ``Drug
testing, in my mind, was never an effective tool for people who are
dependent on drugs.''