When people hear about drug addicts, specifically addictions to crack cocaine and heroin, they picture skinny, abnormally underweight, pale, emaciated figures with hollowed eyes and white skin who live in abandoned warehouses. However, drug addiction does not always appear like this, and should therefore not be entirely stereotyped. Many drug addicts appear physically normal, and may even be quite attractive. Weight and body mass index supports that these are not in any way supportive indicators of whether or not someone might be addicted to any type of drug. Malnutrition certainly increased in drug addicts, so normal tissue development is greatly weakened and turned into a very fragile structure. However, even high degrees of malnutrition can exist before the body starts showing any measurable changes in mass or weight.
The ability of drug addicts to mix in with normal everyday people is precisely what makes workplace drug testing so necessary. Even if your manager seems to be a great guy with wonderful personality skills, we do not always know what someone is like in the privacy of their own home or club, and many people lead double lives in order to successfully maintain their professional careers and their abusive addictions at the same time.
Employee drug and alcohol screening becomes necessary when, for example, home and work life are too stressful, and an employee decides to “take the edge off” by discretely abusing drugs on the side. This discretion is entirely subjective, and their addiction continues, so their perceptive becomes warped and twisted. After some time has passed, everyone else can see that they are an addict, but they themselves believe their behavior to be successfully covering up their abuse. It is far better to simply nip all of this in the bud, and eliminate drug abuse on or near your workplace environment altogether.
Mediscreen offers onsite drug and alcohol testing throughout Australia. This brings the efficiency of drug testing with the convenience of being onsite and storing all of your employee records onsite, as well. Not everyone can be identified as an abuser of drugs, and this is why employee drug testing is such a necessity. Call Mediscreen today: (+61) 1300 79 70 40.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1360-0443.1989.tb00566.x/abstract
