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Washington, D.C.—The nation’s largest independent union of federal workers today sharply criticized proposed new options in federal drug-testing as scientifically questionable and riddled with the potential to produce false positive results that would have “serious repercussions” for the federal workforce and the nation.

“Hard-working federal employees — only a miniscule percentage of whom have ever tested positive for drugs — deserve better than this from their employer,” said President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU). “The taxpayer, as well, deserves better.”

President Kelley’s attack on the proposed use of new tests for federal workplace drug testing programs — right now, only urine samples are used - came in comments submitted in response to draft regulations published earlier this year in the Federal Register by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). A number of scientific studies have raised serious questions about the validity of the additional testing mechanisms SAMHSA has proposed imposing on the federal workforce.

Kelley was particularly critical of SAMHSA’s proposed revisions in several key areas — their lack of scientific validity; reliance on insufficiently tested technology; and the abdication to federal

agencies by SAMHSA of its oversight role in seeing that agencies comply with drug-testing standards. Kelley urged the agency to reconsider its proposed revisions.

NTEU took issue with the proposed guidelines on the use of saliva testing, emphasizing that it is an “insufficiently studied method,” as well as with the agency proposal to allow “point-of-collection testing (POCT).” SAMHSA itself has said that POCT “offers a particular challenge” to federal agencies.

The union went one step further, charging that, under POCT, SAMHSA would have “improperly abdicated its mandated oversight role” to federal agencies by giving them the responsibility for ensuring compliance with drug-testing standards. “Those agencies are not equipped to exercise that responsibility,” NTEU said.

NTEU also criticized the proposed use of the so-called “sweat patch” to test for drug use, calling it “not sufficiently reliable. Until the technology has been refined to the point that SAMHSA is able to declare with greater certainty that environmental contamination is not possible…it must not approve its use,” NTEU said.

Moreover, the union’s comments attacked hair testing for pre-employment, random, return-to-duty and follow-up testing, noting that “SAMHSA is wrong” in its claims that current tests can distinguish between the hair of a drug user and that of someone who has been exposed to drugs in the air.

Studies establish that environmental contamination is a particular problem when hair is tested for drugs, the union said. NTEU said hair testing is “inappropriate” in large part because it is “well established” that dark-colored hair incorporates environmental contamination more rapidly than light-colored hair. Thus, persons with dark hair are “especially likely to receive false positive results.” The union said it “objects most strenuously” to use of a test “with such an inherent racial bias.”

As the largest independent federal union, NTEU represents some 150,000 employees in 30 agencies and departments.