New Drug Testing Rules Coming

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration plans to issue proposed rules this week to expand the types of testing available to federal agencies to test employees for possible drug use. The rules, which are to be published for a 90-day comment, would allow agencies to decide if they wanted to use saliva, sweat and hair tests in addition to the urine tests now used; hair tests, for example, might detect drug use months before that a urine test would not detect. Agencies would be required to split samples so that additional tests could be conducted if the employee disputes the test result. The policy would not expand the situations in which drug testing can be administered-it’s most commonly done in initial or follow-up screening in positions involving law enforcement or classified information and when management has reason to suspect drug use.