Paper presented at the Issues in Crime and Justice Conference, Wellington, NZ 11th June 2013

1. Drug testing beneficiaries:
Widening the net of punitive populism
Julian Buchanan
Institute of Criminology, Victoria University of Wellington
Issues in Crime and Justice Conference
11th June 2013 Government Building, Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand

2. USA policy transfer?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ZRk3qyQzp2w

3. Drug testing offers….
The seductive attraction of new
technology in an era of reductionist
binary thinking, when organisations
and individuals crave certainty and
fear the ‘other’

4. Parent
child
disaster

5. New technologies driving policy and
practice

6. Urine

7. Fingerprints

8. Saliva

9. Hair

10. Sewage Waste Analysis

11. The Concern?
DRUGS

12. Misleading Bifurcation
of Substances
NZ Psychoactive
Substances Bill

13. Extent of Drug Use
The cultural dominance and preference of middle aged (in power)
for alcohol, tobacco and caffeine?

14. An alternative scientific model of drug harm

15. Technology Driven Drug Policy:
The sobriety tag

16. US to NZ Policy-Transfer:
Drug testing built into to US styled Drug Abstinence
Courts rolled out in New Zealand

17. Drug Testing Beneficiaries
Government will stop benefits for repeated
failed drugs tests from beneficiaries
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/policies/5969312/National-gets-tough-on-benefits
US to NZ Policy-Transfer

18. Punitive Populism
• Around 40% jobs listed with Work and Income
require drug tests’
• beneficiaries who fail a test will have the cost of the
drug test deducted from their benefit.
• Where people fail a drug test or refuse to apply for
a drug-tested job, they must agree to stop using
drugs or their benefit will be cut by 50 per cent.
They will be given 30 days to allow any drugs they
have taken to leave their system.
• Where they fail a test or refuse a second time, they
will have their benefit suspended until they agree
that they will provide a 'clean' drug test within 30
days. If they do not do this their benefit will be
cancelled.
• She said estimates at the high end put the cost of
enforcing the policy at $10 million. "We really think
the real cost is around $3 million for those that will
be known as dependent, once this testing comes in.
The savings are estimated to be around $10.5
million."

19. New Technologies
New business opportunities

20. Ex-law enforcement officers working for and sometimes owning drug testing companies

22. Issues

23. Drug testing
– a game of cat and mouse

24. New business
opportunities
to avoid
detection

25. Drug policy, harm and human rights:
A rationalist approach (Stevens 2011)
So the answer to the question of whether there is a right to drug
use appears to be yes. But it is a rather small yes. People may
rationally choose to experience the effects of psychoactive
substances, even if they have no objective need for them
(p.236)
It may be the case that ideology will continue to dominate drug
policy… Drug policy debates need not be seen as a merely matter
of personal preference, political tradition, technocratic calculation
or legal interpretation. They are an arena for rational and ethical
argument.
(p.238) [my emphasis]

27. Little or no distinction
between
USE and MISUSE

28. Liberty, Freedom and Human Rights
to take drugs
“The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of
pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not
attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to
obtain it.” John Stuart Mill On Liberty
The individual should be free to do what they wish with their
life so long as it doesn’t harm other citizens

29. Presence
or
Impairment?
Little or no distinction
between….

30. Dodgy science
Incident + drugs = causal relationship
Problem = drugs
Solution = make people ‘drug’ free

31. Causal
relationship?
Causal
relationship?

33. Zero Tolerance
Abstinence Based Policy
‘the regulation of drugs should reflect the
principles of harm reduction which underpin
this country’s overarching drug policy’
p.47
NZ Law Commission (2011)
Undermining stated harm reduction policy

34. The new war on drugs?
Strategic change from war on
drug cultivation and supply, to
waging war on illicit ‘drug’ use
through an ever intrusive drug
testing regimes, yielding new
business opportunities and
justification to exclude large
numbers of unemployed people
who are currently surplus to
capitalist requirements?

35. Variable detection period
The detection times of abused drugs are extremely
variable. … In urine the detection time of a single dose
varies between 1.5 and 4 days. In chronic users, drugs of
abuse can be detected in urine for approximately 1 week
after last use, and in extreme cases even longer in
cocaine (22 days) and cannabis users (up to 3 months).
Verstraete, A.G., 2004. Detection times of drugs of abuse in
blood, urine, and oral fluid. Ther Drug Monit 26, 200–205.

36. Reliability Concerns
False positives &
false negatives
• Human error
• Technology error
• Significant human variation
• Detection avoided by intervention
• Detection triggered by ‘innocent’ means
http://workrights.us/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/NewInformationDrugTesting.pdf

38. Increase use of new more dangerous
legal highs
If cannabis can stay in the
body for up to a month –
sometimes even 3 months
-some beneficiaries may
switch to other more
harmful drugs?

40. ‘we are doing what other good employers are doing’
Cashman C.M., Ruotsalainen J., Greiner B.A. et al.
Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews: 2009, 2, Art.
No.: CD006566. Exhaustive Systematic Review finds just
two rigorous studies of workplace testing for alcohol
and/or drug use of people employed as drivers.
Testing employees in the workplace for
alcohol and drug use is commonplace
in some countries but its effect in
reducing occupational injuries remains
unclear.
The state of the evidence is insufficient
to be able to advise for or against drug
and alcohol testing of occupational
drivers as the sole long-term solution
to preventing injuries in the context of
workplace culture, peer interaction
and other local factors.
Politically driven policy-
based evidence rather than
scientific evidence-based
policy

42. Claims about saving money in doubt

43. Need for
evidence-based
harm reduction
approach

44. Issues for us all – but beneficiaries will
• There will be a move away from cannabis
• Switch to other illegal drugs or legal highs
• Purchase masking agents
• Carry ‘clean’ urine
• Test positive ultimately lose benefit be driven into poverty
• Without benefit resort to crime
…… for what benefit or gain?

45. Drug Testing ..to conclude
1. Unreliable, over simplistic and costly
2. Breach of human rights
3. Unrealistic, intolerant and excludes people
4. Unnecessarily targets ‘use’ (presence) not misuse (intoxication)
5. Promote abstinence undermines national harm reduction policy
6. Perpetuates a misleading drugs apartheid
7. Promotes politically driven policy-based evidence rather than
scientifically informed evidence-based policy
8. Encourages use of more dangerous substitute substances
Thank you
julian.buchanan@vuw.ac.nz