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Testing for Cannabis: The Issues

First of all, it must be borne in mind that I am writing this from a UK perspective. Testing for cannabis and other recreational drugs by private organisations such as employers is nowhere near as pervasive here as it is in other countries such as the US - yet. But the issues discussed here remain salient, and personally, I can see only an increase in testing of individuals in the future, for reasons discussed both here and on the Habermas and Cannabis page. Indeed, it may well be that an increase in testing might be the condition associated with decriminalisation. I'm not saying this is a good idea, or even justified - but it could happen.

I also don't want to condemn testing out of hand. There are certain jobs and situations in which I think testing is justified. Any worker that is operating heavy machinery or vehicles, or is in any way directly responsible for the lives of others, should not be on cannabis. But this is no greater restriction than is already placed on these same workers with regard to alcohol. Like alcohol (though in different ways), cannabis can impair reaction times, the perception of time, distance and danger, and certain other motor and neural activities. It should also be pointed out that certain prescription drugs can similarly impair an individual's ability to drive, for instance. All in all then, whilst there are certain tasks and jobs which should not be performed on cannabis, the restrictions it places upon you should be no greater than those already imposed on or by the use of alcohol or certain prescription drugs.

Cannabis does not, in moderate quantities, specifically impair the ability to reason logically or to use one's creative energies. Indeed, in many cases it can actually enhance these capabiliites. (About 75% of my PhD thesis has been written under the influence of cannabis: including some published extracts. No-one's yet complained!) Cannabis can free the mind, allowing it to make deductive leaps, logical connections or flights of imagination that it would not normally make. "Lateral thinking" powers can be enhanced by cannabis use. These are of course generalisations - usually, cannabis strengthens that which is already there - and excessive use will not continue to add to these abilities, as eventually you'll be so caned you'll collapse back into incoherence. But, clearly, moderate use of cannabis could be an active boon for certain jobs or activities that do not involve physical skill or numeracy (which is not enhanced, on the whole, by cannabis).

However, one thing that must be borne in mind is that cannabis can be detectable in the body for much longer - weeks longer, in some cases - than the active effects last. (See the Facts section above.) So the driver, for instance, can be straight as a judge and yet still "fail" a cannabis test. In the end, this makes current testing regimes unreliable and confusing. They are not testing your ability to perform a given task - they are testing whether or not you have smoked cannabis in the last month or so, and nothing more. Much better would be an "ability" test, similar to roadside US drink-drive tests (as far as I know). In other words, are you too caned to walk, let alone drive? However, as we've said above, cannabis actually enhances certain abilities at the same time as it depresses others. So what have we got? All we have is a value judgment that cannabis use is undesirable at all times and that organisations such as employers have a right to test for it.

We are living in a surveillance society. Michel Foucault (French philosopher) called it the Panopticon: a term derived from the Greek for "all-seeing". The institutions of the modern state and economy are everywhere. If you live in a British city, you can be followed by closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras virtually everywhere beyond your front door. Even in your own home, you are not safe from indirect methods of surveillance. Digital TV "boxes", for instance, record viewing habits, in order to help advertisers target campaigns to specific households. Supermarkets use "loyalty cards" to record the purchases of customers for much the same reason. Any market research is a form of surveillance. Governments, of course, use more direct methods: files held by security services and police on political activists, recordings of protesters at demonstrations: even writing a letter to your MP will get you a listing on a file.

Many of these surveillance innovations seem harmless. But whether they are or not, we have not consented to their impact upon our lives. And the areas of life penetrated by surveillance continue to increase, with calls for compulsory DNA samples to be stored in a database to help combat crime, for instance. What is sold to us as a "good thing" - combating crime - obscures the fact that this surveillance is an incredible violation of our so-called "liberty". Amongst these are calls for compulsory drug testing. The private sphere of the individual becomes penetrated by state and private surveillance. Where does our sovereignty cover? Even our own bodies are no longer immune.

Employers want to increase efficiency and manage risk. The rules imposed in the workplace become ever more tight. Calls between customer service agents and clients are monitored "for quality control purposes". The freedom of the worker to innovate and create is restricted as processes become more and more centralised, until we reach full "McDonaldisation" - total control, each product being cooked exactly the same way all over the world, times specified to the second and fraction of the second. This urge to control and manage becomes all-consuming. As competitors drive to increase productivity, so other firms must do for fear of being left behind, of being "unproductive" (make that: offering freedoms to workers, treating them as autonomous human beings). Control spreads out of the office and into the home. Employees are told to give up smoking (see: Ted Turner). Their private lives are monitored in an effort to combat any behaviour that may impact upon the individual's workplace. No longer is the contract between employee and employer a simple one of pay for hours worked. The employee signs up for life, and their private life is forfeit.

I'm exaggerating a little to make my point, but this is the way things are going, if not quite so pervasively yet. But in our consumption-oriented age, where we are defined by what we own, the state and economy want to manage this consumption in the same way that they manage savings or trade policy. If something is seen as undesirable - whether justifiedly or through ignorance (views on cannabis tending to fall into the latter category), that management becomes extreme and is indulged in both directly (through legislation and punishment of suppliers) and indirectly - and testing is a prime example of this indirect management.

If drug testing is meant by its advocates to decrease drug use then they have missed the point entirely. The way to reduce drug use is to look at the cause, not the symptom, and testing - like legislation - treats only the symptom. Why do people take cannabis? Only if that question can be answered might there be a reduction in cannabis use. And I doubt that the question has an answer - and I certainly reject the assumption that a reduction in the use of cannabis is automatically A Good Thing. Testing springs from that mind-set that refuses to look beyond the myopic view that "all drug use is abuse", and that simple solutions can deal with complex issues. Well, to such people I say this:

For every complex issue there is a simple solution. And it won't work.

I know that this essay says nothing about how we can stop the pervasive and increasing influence of cannabis and other drug testing. As it is part of a wider problem (the surveillance society), this problem also is too complex for simple solutions. The issue can only be dealt with, in my opinion, as part of the broad campaign for the decriminalisation and ultimately legalisation of cannabis - although as I've said this may not even lead to a reduction of testing. I'm sorry I can't be more helpful - but that's the way it is.

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