Drug testing: watchdog or with-hunt? Opinions vary, but all agree on one point: you can't turn your back on the drug problem

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Sept 1, 1990 by Warren Berger

Jim Kaminsky was working as an editor at Fairchild Publications when the company introduced pre-employment drug testing policy three years ago. "It created quite a bit of dissension in the ranks," he recalls. "There were fears that the company might begin testing employees already on the job. And editors were also worried that top candidates for staff positions might be scared off by the test."

To make matters worse, Kaminsky says, word circulated among employees that part of the program would include use of drug-sniffing dogs to patrol the offices at night, an item immediately leaked by staffers to outside news media. "Things got pretty weird," Kaminsky says. "Editors were actually leaving pieces of meat under their desks for the dogs."

For all the furor it raised at the time, Fairchild's drug testing policy, which was mandated by the publisher's parent company, Capital Cities, didn't create a police state at the company (the dogs were quickly called off), nor did it cause a subsequent shortage of qualified job candidates. In fact, as Kaminsky points out, the issue became a non-issue among employees within a matter of weeks.

Still, the company's early difficulty with the program underscores a point not lost on publishers considering implementing new anti-drug policies of their own. It is a sensitive area," says Robert Boucher, president of Gralla Publications. "But it's also an area that absolutely must be addressed. You cannot turn your back on the drug problem." Wave of the present'

In june, Boucher's company introduced pre-employment drug testing of all job applicants. Gralla is just one of a growing number of publishing companies now leaning toward drug screening, along with expanded employee treatment programs, as part of an effort to combat the problem of employee drug abuse. in the immediate future, PennWell Publishing of Tulsa, Oklahoma, is expected to adopt a screening program; Meredith Corporation and Bill Communications are also looking into implementing screening programs, but have no timetable as yet. And at least three other major publishers, whose identities have not been revealed, are looking into drug testing, according to New York attorney Robert Nobile, of Epstein Becker Borsody & Green, who specializes in advising companies on such programs. The newcomers are joining the ranks of Times Mirror Magazines, Fairchild, Chilton and other publishing companies already testing applicants. "It's the wave of the present," says Thomas Hadderman, vice president of human resources at Chilton Company. "More and more companies are taking a high-profile stand on this issue."

Katherine Smith, an industry consultant with First Management Services, says that "while drug abuse is not a new problem, it's one that publishers are paying closer attention to right now. Those who aren't actually moving ahead with new programs have at least begun to weigh the pros and cons of it."

Roland DeSilva, who heads an industry executive search firm, says publishing companies "are coming out strongly in favor of testing candidates, and candidates are beginning to accept that this is becoming a standard procedure in publishing companies and they must comply with it."

Why has employee drug-testing and treatment-an issue that tends to be associated with the roaring eighties-suddenly become a hot topic in the publishing industry in 1990? Publishing sources cite a number of reasons. The eighties are no longer roaring, but statistics show that the costs of employee drug abuse to American business is continuing to rise, and publishers are concerned about the ways in which the trend could affect them. Although many industries confronted the testing issue a few years ago, most publishing companies did not. That, according to Shannon Warren-White, human resources manager at PennWell, has led to current concerns that "publishing could become the path of least resistance in the corporate war against drugs; we could become a magnet for people who are being screened out by various other industries."

Gralla human resources director Kathy Murphy agrees that publishers lagged behind some other industries in confronting the problem. "At a lot of manufacturing and financial companies, the issue came up a few years ago and was widely publicized," she says. "i don't think publishing companies believed they were affected by it. But now it seems that more and more of these companies are beginning to realize that this is a serious situation, and they're going to have to deal with it. "

The seriousness of the situation hit home at Gralla, Murphy says, when the company experienced problems involving internal theft; the incidents may or may not have been drug-related, but they nevertheless prompted the company to move ahead quickly with a stricter program. But Boucher adds that the enactment of an anti-drug program at the company is more proactive than reactive. "We're not on a witch-hunt," he says. "We're trying to make a positive statement to our employees that we're committed to providing a safe, drug-free work environment for them."