ATA Urges Congressional Action on Drug, Alcohol Testing
American Trucking Associations Wednesday called on Congress to help the trucking industry to improve highway safety by supporting efforts to enhance drug and alcohol testing for the nation’s 3.4 million truck drivers.
The move came in conjunction with the release of a 74-page Government Accountability Office report Wednesday, showing a flawed oversight system that allows truckers to fail a drug test and yet move on to driving for another company, the Dallas Morning News reported.
The report found that some trucking companies do not conduct required pre-employment and random drug tests and have limited incentives to do so, the paper said.
Only about 2% of all trucking companies undergo checks each year by state agencies and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, GAO found, according to the Morning News.
“Trucking has worked diligently to eradicate drug and alcohol abuse from its work force [and] we’ve made great progress in recent years,” said ATA President Bill Graves said in a statement. “But we are requesting additional help from the government since it is a federally required program involving significant federal oversight.
“Today’s [GAO] report confirms the need for what ATA has been recommending for many years — a national database of drug and alcohol test results,” Graves said in a statement.
ATA is urging Congress to take swift action to authorize and fund a national database of drug and alcohol testing results of commercial drivers “to make a good testing program even better.”
Consistent with GAO’s recommendations, ATA is asking Congress to ban the manufacture, sale and distribution of products that help some drivers evade drug tests; for penalties for those who use them; and to provide the Transportation Department with additional authority to improve oversight of specimen collection facilities and practices.
ATA also urged Congress to direct the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and DOT to allow the testing of alternative specimens such as hair, which allows illegal drug use to be detected for a longer period of time.
