Workplace drug testing finds cocaine, marijuana use at 12-year high

CHICAGO – Employees increasingly are testing positive for marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamines at work, driving the rates of positive drug tests in the United States to the highest level in 12 years.

Quest Diagnostics, a leading lab services company based in Madison, N.J., on Tuesday released its annual analysis of more than 10 million workforce drug test results nationwide.

It showed that 4.2 percent of drug tests came back positive last year, up from 4 percent the year before and the highest rate since 2004, when it was 4.5 percent.

The rate of positive drug tests in the nation's workforce remains far lower than the nearly 14 percent positive rate the United States saw when Quest started the annual report in 1988.

But after declining for more than two decades, the rate of positive results has been climbing since 2012.

"It's pretty alarming," said Dr. David Fletcher, a medical review officer and founder of SafeWorks Illinois in Champaign, which analyzes drug tests for employers and was not involved in the analysis.

Quest's statistics reflect what he sees in his practice, he said.

Fletcher believes people have become more casual about marijuana use as more states have legalized it for medical or recreational purposes. That includes some employers who he says aren't following their own drug policies as they become more tolerant of workers' drug usage.

"We still see some employers who say, 'We wouldn't have any workers if we tested for marijuana,' " Fletcher said.

Colorado and Washington, the first states to legalize recreational marijuana, have seen particularly large increases in positive test results and now exceed the national average, but they still lag far behind Oregon, which has the highest rate of positive marijuana tests at 3.9 percent. It is followed by Vermont and Maine.

Positive cocaine tests also have increased, for the fourth consecutive year in the general workforce and the second year for safety-sensitive workers. Texas, South Carolina and North Carolina had the highest rates of positive cocaine tests.

Positive amphetamine tests, which includes methamphetamines as well as prescription drugs such as Adderall, rose more than 8 percent in both the general U.S. and safety-sensitive workforces compared with 2015.