Why has no one made this connection yet? (The REAL "gateway" involved in marijuana)

I just had a thought.

It's already been established time and time again that companies that drug test their employees have lower rates of productivity (unless you want to go by the biased Marlboro-style industry-funded research that always states that always conclude that drug testing is the best thing ever to happen to American business).  The mechanism for this is usually worker morale, that employees who feel respected, valued and trusted by their employers do superior work to employees in companies where they are treated with contempt by the management (to the point of having no physical privacy rights, being openly called criminals and being forced to subject themselves to constant humiliating and invasive physical searches to "prove" their innocence only to have to prove it again the next day if the employer demands it.)  I am not denying this either; the fact that employer respect correlates to worker morale correlates to higher productivity is also well-established, as is the fact that people perform poorly when subjected to constant surveillance.

But here's what I was thinking today.

It's been established (again, by all the non-biased research) that people who smoke marijuana tend to be more productive than people who do not.  And now it's been established (again, by all non-biased research) that companies that drug test have fewer marijuana users but a hell of a lot more cocaine users.  As my late brother once told me, he thought I was mad and that drug testing was an important part of ensuring workplace safety and productivity, right up until he started working at a warehouse with a robust "your piss and your body is company property subject to constant surveillance" policy and found himself for the first time constantly surrounded by glassy-eyed co-workers who were clearly in the grip of some hard drug like cocaine while working on the heavy machinery.  Drug testing programs target marijuana primarily, as that is the only drug they have more than the most forlorn hope of ever catching, since the hard drugs clean out of the system within a day or two, metabolites and all, and so marijuana accounts for about 98% of all positive tests--which means if your company tests for four drugs and marijuana, a common policy layout, they will have to catch 200 drug users to net one positive for every non-marijuana drug, and the other 196 users will be marijuana users.  Which means that catching hard drug users with suspicionless drug tests is like trying to find a needle in a haystack.  Which means both that marijuana users are increasingly being pushed into using harder drugs that are more difficult to catch AND that cocaine/heroine/hard drug users, including those who will come to work under the influence, have a better chance of getting hired to begin with and staying employed than people who smoke harmless marijuana responsibly off the clock no differently than someone having a cold beer at home.

So why has no one put these ideas together logically?  Why has no one added this evidence of drug testing driving up hard drug usage rates as a possible reason that companies that do not drug test have higher productivity rates?  Not to crowd out the psychological evidence that workers who feel respected, valued and trusted do better work and that that will have a significant effect on the productivity of a company, but it's becoming clear that drug testing programs are making hard drug users more employable than marijuana users and, in this way, prodding a lot of incredibly productive marijuana users into using harder drugs that are actually harmful and addictive.

Once again, any elements of marijauna that could make it a "gateway" to other more harmful drugs are a direct result of the failed Drug War and it's methods and have nothing to do with any inherent properties of this amazing plant.  This, of course, has been observed, but for some reason the role of drug testing in this has been overlooked.  The Drug War and its various dishonest profiteers, especially in the drug testing industry, have been responsible for creating the problem they pretend to be solving, and then sell us more fraudulent "solutions" that, far worse than mere ineffectual snake oil or placebo, actually make the problem much bigger.

Drug testing is the REAL "gateway drug".  Legalize marijuana, eliminate the various failed Drug War techniques like drug testing, and see how much better things get.  It will happen, and they know it, which is why we're seeing these tantrums.  I look forward to pissing on the grave of the drug testing industry, an industry that it turns out is directly responsible for millions of harmless marijuana users becoming addicted to hard drugs and, in some cases, going to an early grave.  I look forward to that industry meeting its end, and it will not be missed.

Drug Testing's Liars Part 1: The Shameless Liar

Allow me to introduce you to Susan Ramsden. She's one of Drug Testing's Liars and, believe me, she is shameless.

From “Drug Testing’s NegativeResults” (may require free signup, but it's worth it):

“The drug-testing industry generally treats these reports with scorn. It advises doubters, in effect, to value the drug testers’ experiences on the front lines above dry, abstract studies and, above all, to consider just who is making the arguments against them. Susan Ramsden, a forensic toxicologist who is founder and president of Comprehensive Medical Center, a drug-testing service in Sacramento, California, says that whatever the national statistics happen to show, she does business in what she believes to be the illegal amphetamine production and consumption capital of the world, parts of Northern California. 

"If I go into warehouses, small construction companies or temp agencies that use day labor, we’ll have as high as a 30 percent positive drug rate," Ramsden says. "When I get a call from a business owner, saying, ‘Oh my God, I just was told we have a problem,’ or ‘I’ve just found some drugs,’ I’ve sometimes found 100 percent of his employees positive for amphetamines."

What a liar! You seriously expect me to not only ignore what the actual data shows in favor of your “stories from the front line” anecdotes (after years of spreading false data to promote your dishonest trade and encouraging people to look at “the facts” about drug testing, now you want people to ignore them because the actual facts are starting to emerge), but to believe that you not only found “100 percent of employees” testing positive at all, but that they all test positive for the EXACT SAME DRUG? Despite the fact that the vast majority of illicit drug users are using marijuana and the fact that the majority of positive drug tests are for marijuana, not to mention that there are plenty of other illicit drugs, you expect anyone to believe that your supposed anecdotal 100% result was entirely homogenous?

And THEN you expect us to believe you’ve had that result MULTIPLE TIMES?

Listen, Susie, I know your entire industry has been based on lies, deliberately skewed data, moral panic and public ignorance, but I can't help but feel that you are now being dishonest to yourself, if you can say those things with a straight face and expect anyone to believe you. I know your entire industry is based on ignorance of the facts, but ignorance is not stupidity. You, like the rest of the liars in the drug testing industry, seem to have gotten complacent and seem to have conflated those two ideas (stupidity and ignorance) as if they were interchangable, but they are not. You seem to have forgotten that public support, or at least acceptance, of your industry is based on the public simply not knowing the facts (ignorance) and not based on the public being mindless mouth-breathing simpletons who would stick their head in the toilet if you told them there was magic world of marshmallows in there (stupid). You seem to have forgotten that you have to strike that delicate balance of vague lies based on deliberately skewed data to maintain your scam. You've gotten so careless, thinking yourself untouchable, that you are now bleating obvious untruths that anyone with a modicum of logic could unravel in an instant. (Seriously, I've run your story by various people who all opened their eyes wide in amazement and pronounced your “I've found 100 percent workforce on a single hard drug more than once!” story to be clear, abject bullshit.

Everyone knows that there is exactly ZERO chance that any workforce would turn out 100% positive drug test results, either once or multiple times, and there is exactly ZERO chance that even if it managed to happen even once, against all odds, that every single individual would be getting high on the same substance, and it's even less likely that it would be a hard drug (as hard drug use is directly correlated with having a drug testing program, while MJ users are more prevalent in companies that respect their workers' physical privacy and human rights—and companies that don't drug test also have higher productivity rates, another thing that unbiased—ie: not bought and paid for by your dishonest lying industry—has shown time and time again, not to mention the fact that marijuana use dwarfs all other drug use in this country). Not to mention the fact that a company that had a workforce with 100% addiction rates for hard drugs would not have lasted long enough for you to ply your dark trade on their employees' flesh.  And there is ZERO chance that, even if it happened once against all odds, it would happen more than once, much less the multiple times you so coyly suggest.

And again, I can't emphasize this enough, observe how the drug testing industry has changed its colors in such a way that shows they are a scam and they know it. When they were deliberately skewing the data and cooking the statistics and lying outright in their bought-and-paid-for Marlboro-style “studies” and “research”, they wanted you to pay attention to the so-called “dry abstract studies”--but now that people are becoming aware that all the legitimate research—the actual science—is in fact showing your industry not only doesn't work but actually causes increased rates of hard drug use, you want to try and hand-wave that away and pretend it doesn't matter, because you have “experiences” that totally disprove “whatever the statistics say”. Sure, the accepted statistics only count when they're propping up your fraudulent industry and putting money in your pocket.

And then there is the sheer unmitigated gall that her kind has to say "consider just who is making the arguments against [the drug testing industry]" when this can happen:

The drug screens used by most companies are not reliable. These tests yield false positive results at least 10 percent, and possibly as much as 30 percent, of the time. Experts concede that the tests are unreliable. At a recent conference, 120 forensic scientists, including some who worked for manufacturers of drug tests, were asked, "Is there anybody who would submit urine for drug testing if his career, reputation, freedom or livelihood depended on it?" Not a single hand was raised.[ACLU Briefing Paper No. 5: Drug Testing in the Workplace]

You have a lot of nerve to expect us to believe your spin anymore.  You people, you forensic scientist drug testing shills, know you're peddling snake oil and, like Romney in a closed-door meeting of rich American aristocrats feeling he can speak freely, you admit to each other in private what you would never admit to John or Jane American.  I can't think of  a better definition of charlatan than that.

It's true, though.  People need to consider the source.  Only rather than "consider just who is making the arguments against [the drug testing industry]" they need to instead "consider just who is making the arguments IN FAVOR OF [the drug testing industry]".  There, FIFY.  Because the biggest and most damaging falsehoods are coming from evil corporate shills like you, who stand to lose billions if people knew the facts about the Drug War profiteering scam you've been running on our bodies for over thirty years.  Those of us arguing against you are honest, decent, hardworking citizens who value our civil and human rights, including our right to privacy--especially our right to our intimate bodily privacy, and the only thing we stand to gain by arguing against your kind is the restoration of those rights--and what's more, we have the facts on our side.  No amount of demonizing opponents of drug testing as "mindless addicts protecting their illegal habit" is going to save your industry from what is coming, when you have nothing but air-spun untruths to back up your claims.  Air-spun untruths that come from a single disreputable source, at that (purchased "scientific" data).

Look, I’m not “calling” you a con artist per se, but you are certainly using the same techniques that a con artist uses. I am calling you a damned liar though. You, Susan Ramsden, are a liar and a loser, like all your colleagues in the drug testing industry, and your kind is on its way out now that people are starting to see past your lies. Legalization will be the final nail in your industry's coffin, and you know it.  I hope you enjoyed your ill-gotten undeserved and unearned profit and power while it lasted, liar.  You should be ashamed to lie the way you do, and the fact that you don't seem to be ashamed is a testimony to your low character.  Yourkind will not be missed.