Unpopular Opinion

That implies that drug use in general would severly negatively impact your work performance.

And thats simply not the case. John smoking a joint before dinner and partying on MDMA one Saturday in a month, will not make him a worse employee than Jim, who takes no illegalized drugs, but is consistently sleep deprived and over caffeinated.

Drug tests don't test for current intoxication. They test for drug consumption in the past few days, or in the case of weed, past few weeks. So even for heavy machinery or other typical cases where current intoxication is not acceptable, they test for the wrong thing. Finally it is extremely inconsistent. If you have a opiod prescription, you are allowed to drive cars, while the medication is working if the impairment isn't too strong . But it impairs you in the same way like recreational opiod use would. So the same impairment is perfectly acceptable in one case, and a reason for losing your licencse and possible criminal charges in the other.

I don’t see how that follows. The point is a drug test is a personal invasion so there needs to be a good reason. Operating heavy machinery is a good reason. Where lives are at stake is a good reason. Where it can have an outsized financial or other impact may be a good reason.

However, for most people, I don’t see why it’s not just a matter of good job performance or not. Sure, companies may want to drug test everyone to keep them in line, but that’s not sufficient reason

Same. I was a cook in a casino restaurant (bear with me), and when I applied for the job the head chef asked me "can you pass a drug test?" I said "oh yeah, I don't do any dr-", he interrupts me to say "I didn't ask if you do any drugs, I asked if you can pass a drug test. Yes or no?"

Well, turns out 2 line cooks had heroin problems, the head chef, sous chef, and morning lead chef were functioning alcoholics, one general manager was coked out of his fucking mind 24/7 until the last few days before payday, the other was taking about 3x as much xanax as anyone should, and the wait staff smoked approximately as much as Snoop Dogg.

Needless to say, that place was the definition of a runaway clusterfuck. Much of their problems were caused by the rampant drug use amongst the employees that could have been prevented if they were a little more thorough with the drug tests, rather than literally giving me the pee cup to take home and bring back later.