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Men and women are valued for their role as workers -- workers not merely at a given company -- but workers who form part of a larger industrial/technological organism that is the national, and increasingly, the global economy. Rights of privacy give way to rights of public utility:
People want, not only profits, efficiency, and productivity, but also security. In order to feel safer, we willingly surrender some of our independence, our privacy. We support random drug testing in the war against drugs; we welcome the idea of state trooper roadblocks in order to crack down on drunk drivers. We rationalize: these are good things and a little erosion of our Fourth Amendment protections against "unreasonable searches and seizures" seems a small price to pay for security and peace of mind.
(Wood, 1996, p. 94)
Forth Amendment or Fourteenth Amendment -- it does not matter. Each guarantees some fundamental right we all possess as American citizens, as human beings with a heart and mind, and some say, soul. The more we are monitored by others, the more we feel compelled to monitor ourselves, self-censorship becomes a way of life, and "In many ways it is even worse, because it means we have ceased to fight; we have accepted the limitations on our freedom" (Wood, 1996, p. 97). Workplace drug testing is an unnecessary and highly invasive means of social control, for that is what is, plain and simple. Human beings do not require a government to make personal decisions for them, whether those decisions involve choices of whom to associate with, what to eat or drink, or what kind of drug to take. It is extremely...
People make different choices. People have different priorities. People need to make decisions for themselves. The right to privacy precludes a regime of workplace drug testing.
References
Barke, M., Fribush, R., & Stearns, P.N. (2000). Nervous Breakdown in 20th-Century American Culture. Journal of Social History, 33(3), 565.
Cann, W. & De Belleroche, J. (Eds.). (2002). Drink, Drugs and Dependence: From Science to Clinical Practice. New York: Routledge.
Davis, E., & Hueller, S. (2006). Strengthening the Case for Workplace Drug Testing: The Growing Problem of Methamphetamines. SAM Advanced Management Journal, 71(3), 4+.
Elwood, W.N. (1994). Rhetoric in the War on Drugs: The Triumphs and Tragedies of Public Relations. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers.
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