Just Released Quest Diagnostics 2017 Drug Testing Index Results Show Startling Changes Affecting Employers

It's deja vu all over again.

Yogi Berra

All employers should review the yearly release of Quest Diagnostics' Annual Drug Testing Index, which since 1988 has provided the nation's most accurate information on employee drug use changes.

I quoted the sage, Yogi Berra for several reasons to frame my discussion of trends.

Reason 1 – until the last few years, workplace drug issues had fallen off of most employers'' screens because the positive test rate fell from a whopping 13.6% in 1988 to 3.5% in 2012 – 20+ years of decline. In 2013, they began to rise again, led by a staggeringly fast rise in opiates positivity.

Reason 2 – not only have the 30+ state laws legalizing medical and/or recreational marijuana created practical challenges, new state laws and aggressive Northeastern states' courts are attacking the until-recently protected right of employers everywhere tto require employees to report to work free from the presence of unlawful drugs – and relied