Corporations have an obligation to prevent harm in the work place. Drug use
is like to cause harm thus, corporations must be able to take steps to eliminate
that harm. As a result, drug testing is an effective way to eliminate drug
abuse, which in essence causes harm. Therefore, they must be permitted to test
for drugs. Finally, does the Ought Implies Can theory work? It really depends on
what argument one uses to support it or argue against it. Clearly, if a
corporation has an obligation to prevent harm to others some sort of control is
in order, but not total control.
If drug testing is morally permissible than why
would it stop there? It could get out of hand and employers could start
administering polygraph tests or even psychological manipulation. There has to
be another way to prevent harm or at least create an atmosphere where
corporations can not be held accountable. The fact is that drug testing is
skeptical at best. Most of the time when drug testing is administered it is very
unreliable. There has always been a high rate of false negatives and false
positives. For instance, drugs are sometimes not picked up by the test. Because
of this situation, if the test is given to an employee, and he passes but then
causes harm on the job due to intoxication, the corporation can not possibly be
held responsible. If the corporation is held responsible what good did the drug
test do in the first place? The fact is that if corporations are going to be
held responsible then they are obligated to do something but not drug testing.
Drug testing is clearly not the answer because they are highly ineffective. In
addition, if this type of situation occurs more often than not when the test is
administered, than all the test is really doing in most cases is wasting the
employees time and the employers money.
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