Here's an interesting one from Dr.
Dean
( Radio Medical
talk show Host )
.
Drug Testing Nabbed Some Pot Smokers
( At $77,000 A Head )
( Big Brother is TESTING You - NOT HIM )
.
September 08, 1999
.
I've always maintained that drug testing in the
work place is pretty much a waste of money and time.
.
Now, a report on ABC news took the drug testing issue
to task and showed how there's no evidence that the procedure helps prevent
worksite accidents or increase productivity.
.
For example, one study shows that the massive government drug-testing
program spent $11.7 million to check 29,000 workers.
The end result is that only 153 drug users were unveiled – and they were
probably only marijuana users.
.
This amounts to a cost of $77,000 for each drug
user that was identified, and this comes from taxpayer money.
.
In private business,
the few companies that have done drug - testing studies have
concluded it wasn't worth the cost. Shouldn't the government
be getting a message here?
.
Researchers say there's no evidence drug testing
programs result in increased productivity, a decrease in accidents or increased
profits for the employer.
.
I agree with the news show conclusion
that drug testing is a "faulty and costly" program that could be
replaced with on - the - job performance tests and closer
monitoring of workers.
.
For More interesting articles on the medical aspect of the drug
problem - and other interesting medical subjects visit
Dr, Dean at: Dr. Dean's Health Central:
.
http://www.healthcentral.com
{ The Government
doesn't have to show a profit - think about this on Apriil 15 th. }
.
" ever think you have been LIED to ?"
Study Finds Poverty More Harmful to Children
than Pre-Natal Exposure to Cocaine
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http://www.drcnet.org/wol/118.html#prenatalexposure
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A report in the December issue of the Journal of Developmental and behavioral
Pediatrics concludes that the negative effects of poverty far outweigh
the effects of fetal exposure to cocaine in terms of childhood development.
The report follows a study of more than two hundred children from birth
through four-and-a-half years, half of whose mothers had been frequent
users of cocaine during pregnancy, and all of whom came from low-income
families.
.
"The findings are overwhelming
and persistent -- there may be a drug effect, but it's totally overshadowed
by poverty," Dr. Hallam Hurt, the chairman of the division of neonatology
at the Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia and the study's lead
author, told a Reuters reporter.
.
The study found that
all of the children tested below the norm, based on studies of mixed-income
children, but that the cocaine-exposed children's scores were not significantly
different from those of the others.
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"A decade ago, the cocaine-exposed child
was stereotyped as being neurologically crippled -- trembling in a corner
and irreparably damaged. But this is unequivocally not the case.
And furthermore, the inner-city child who has had no drug exposure at all
is doing no better than the child labeled a 'crack-baby,'" Hurt said.
.
This is not news to
many who have worked on the front lines in poverty-stricken communities,
according to Lynn Paltrow, the program director of National Advocates for
Pregnant Women and an attorney who has defended women against "crack mother"
laws that seek to imprison pregnant women and mothers who test positive
for drugs. "For ten years, this is exactly what I've been hearing
from drug treatment programs, like Operation PAR in Florida," she told
The Week Online. "It's no coincidence that the alleged epidemic of
crack babies occurred after eight years of Reagan-era budget cuts," she
added.
.
Nevertheless, the myth
of the "crack baby" has been a persistent one. And for that reason,
Paltrow said, studies like Hurt's are crucial. "It's extraordinarily
important to have careful, well-constructed research to support what many
of us who are opposed to the War on Drugs -- and Women and Children --
have long suspected," she said.
.
Phillip Coffin, a research
associate at the Lindesmith Center, agrees. "This is exactly the
sort of research that should have been done years ago," he said.
"If we took the time to compare the effects of poverty, and hunger, and
spousal abuse, and discrimination, and lack of good medical care to the
effects of prenatal drug exposure, we'd find the former would almost always
greatly outweigh the latter. Hurt has done an extraordinary, high-quality
study."
.
You can read Phil Coffin's
research brief on "Cocaine and Pregnancy," as well as writing by Lynn Paltrow
and others on the subject of women and drugs, on the Lindesmith Center
web site at:
.
http://www.lindesmith.org
.