Substance Abuse In The Workplace Essay

Substance and alcohol abuse has been around forever, sadly. This abuse is defined by the habitual consumption of illegal substances or legal alcohol. Lawyers aren’t known for substance abuse but more for alcohol abuse. Drug abuse in the workplace is known throughout the world and is a rising concern. A report in the Harvard Business Review in 1982 stated “alcohol and substance abuse was becoming a growing problem”. The government began sponsoring studies; one of their first one was by the Research Triangle Institute that found “the cost of reduced productivity alone is larger than $99 billion a year. An additional $17 billion is spent on treatments and rehab for these workers”. The total of this alcohol and substance abuse is around $13 million per hour or $318 million per day! This just shows that the increasing rate of alcohol and substance abuse is costing the business world billions

Since the 1990’s the government began creating acts and screening methods for workers in the U.S. The first thing created was the “Drug Free Workplace Act”, and Bush administration’s 1990 National Drug Control Safety Strategy. This was an aggressive strategy to reduce supply and demand of the drugs, provide treatment for alcohol and substance problems, discourage drug use through rehab and educational videos, and to enforce the laws against the people who continue to do these things. Now after a couple of years of the government showing they care and want to control this problem workplaces throughout the U.S. began to make it a law that drugs and alcohol were not allowed at the workplace. Then the growth of the number of treatment and additional services aimed at fixing the problem began to grow, which in reality created more jobs. These acts, facilities, and professions that aimed towards fixing this problem began to make a