Source: End The LieMadison Ruppert
Florida has become the first state in the America to allow public employees
to be randomly tested for a wide variety of drugs, thanks to the
Florida legislature and Florida’s Republican governor, Rick Scott.
The glaring problem with this legislation – which was promoted by
Governor Scott who actually co-founded Solantic, a company that runs a
chain of some 32 urgent care centers, which we will get into later in
this article – is that all elected officials are exempt from the law.
When similar legislation aimed at forcing the drug testing of welfare
recipients (something Governor Scott also pushed for in Florida) was
proposed in Indiana, some astute legislators amended the bill to include
elected officials as well. Unsurprisingly, the bill was thrown out post haste.
Therefore, if you want to do mounds of cocaine and hold a
taxpayer-funded job, you’d better get elected to some government
position; otherwise you’re liable to get your urine tested.
I must point out, however, that the law does not require that state agencies drug test employees, it merely allows such activities.
It allows state agencies to randomly test up to 10% of their employees every three months for illicit drugs, prescription drugs and even alcohol, according to Noel Brinkerhoff with AllGov.
However, how they will test for alcohol is unclear to me, as most
tests require the subject to have consumed alcohol recently, meaning it
would likely only catch people who were actually drinking on the job.
On the other hand, some illegal substances like cannabis can remain
in the system for quite a while but other illegal drugs like
methamphetamine and others pass relatively quickly.
Unfortunately, the people of Florida have not been very vocal on this
issue, especially the fact that such tests will usually catch people
who smoke marijuana, but not others who use much more dangerous drugs
which rapidly pass through the system.
