Truck Drivers’ Drug Tests: Undercover Investigators Reveal How Easy It Is to Cheat on Truckers’ Drug Tests

Undercover investigators for the Government Accountint Office have found that it is surprisingly easy to cheat on random drug tests designed to catch truck drivers who use drugs.  Using bogus truck driver’s licenses to gain access to 24 drug-testing sites, the investigators  found that 75 percent “failed to restrict access to  items that could be used to adulterate or dilute the [urine] specimen, meaning that running water, soap, or air freshener was available in the bathroom during the test.” While the FMCSA estimates that fewer than 2 percent of truck drivers test positive each year for controlled substances,  when Oregon conducted its own tests, 9 percent of truck drivers tested positive. Dozens of products on the Web are marketed to truckers as fail-safe ways to defeat the mandatory drug tests. The GAO team  bought drug-masking products over the Web and was able to mix them with real specimens at the drug-testing sites “without being caught by site collectors,” the agency said in a report scheduled to be made public Thursday. (Thanks to alert reader David Warren in Florida for calling my attention to this article.)

The Shigley Law Firm  represents plaintiffs in wrongful death and catastrophic injury cases statewide in Georgia, and in other states subject to the multijurisdictional practice and pro hac vice rules in each state. Ken Shigley was designated as a “SuperLawyer” in Atlanta Magazine and one of the “Legal Elite” in Georgia Trend Magazine. He is a Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy, Chair of the Southeastern Motor Carrier Liability Institute and former chair of the Georgia Insurance Law Institute. He particularly focuses on cases arising from truck wrecks and accidents.