DOT Drug Tests Faulty, GAO Tells House Panel
By Sean McNally, Senior Reporter
This story appears in the Nov. 12 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.
WASHINGTON — Federal investigators told Congress that the Department of Transportation’s drug- and alcohol-testing program for truck drivers is unreliable and riddled with problems.
“Our testing clearly shows that the drug user could easily beat the DOT drug test, even if the collection sites followed all of the DOT protocols,” said Gregory Kutz, managing director of forensic audits for the Government Accountability Office. “The test can be beat using counterfeit documents, synthetic urine or adulterants.”
Another GAO official, Katherine Siggerud, told the House Transportation Committee’s highways subcommittee on Nov. 1, “There appears to be a significant lack of compli-ance [with drug and alcohol rules] among motor carriers, particularly small carriers and self-employed drivers.”
After the GAO testimony, several officials said they were supporting a plan proposed by American Trucking Associations to create a national database of drivers who have tested positive during drug tests.
Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), chairman of the highways subcommittee, called the Nov. 1 testimony “absolutely devastating,” saying the investigations showed that “in the United States, we have no meaningful program of drug testing for commercial truck drivers. None.”
The problems, revealed in an undercover investigation of 24 collection sites, “raise seri-ous questions about the safety of our nation’s highways,” GAO’s Kutz said. “Our work shows that the tests can be beat using counterfeit documents, synthetic urine or adul-terants.”
Siggerud, who is the director of GAO’s physical infrastructure issues group, said FMCSA does not do enough to oversee collection agents, unless there are complaints, and reviews drug testing programs at only a small fraction of carriers each year.
Rep. James Oberstar (D-Minn.), chairman of the full Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, agreed, saying, “To find that [our drug-testing program] falls so grossly short, as you put it, is shocking.”
Describing some of the problems, Kutz said the GAO team used fake drivers’ licenses at test facilities near Los Angeles, Dallas, New York and Washington without being de-tected. “This clearly shows that the drug user could send someone else in their place to take the drug test.”
GAO “also purchased synthetic urine and adulterants on the Internet and used these products for eight of our tests,” without being caught, he said.
GAO looked at the way test protocols were handled and, Kutz said, “with respect to protocols, 22 of the 24 sites that we visited failed at least two of the 16 DOT protocols we tested for.”
Siggerud’s report said, “Products designed to ‘beat’ the test are marketed brazenly on the Internet,” making samples unreliable, even when a carrier has a testing program in place.
She said another problem was that job-hopping after a positive drug test “appears to be quite common.”
Oberstar criticized the practice of marketing and selling masking agents or synthetic samples.
“There’s no other beneficial use for those products — they ought to be banned,” he said. “I hope the outcome of this hearing is legislation to do exactly that.”
Testifying for ATA, Greer Woodruff, vice president of safety and security for truckload carrier J.B. Hunt Transport Services, urged Congress to create and fund “a centralized clearinghouse for positive drug and alcohol test results.”
FMCSA Administrator John Hill, testifying at the hearing, defended the agency’s pro-gram as “aggressive” but agreed with the need to improve the program. He said he would support legislation to ban devices or chemicals aimed at defeating drug tests and giving the agency authority to fine collection sites for failing to follow procedures.
Oberstar said the current system of relying on drivers to self-report positive drug tests to employers, and past employers to provide information to prospective ones was not good enough because it allowed drivers to “jump from job to job to job and leave their drug history behind.”
To combat this practice, DeFazio said he “would like to move forward legislation to sup-port [a database].”
ATA President Bill Graves called for the national clearinghouse in August (8-6, p. 5).
Hill said he supported the concept and that he was building it into the agency’s overhaul of compliance review procedures, known as CSA 2010.
One of the main roadblocks, Hill said, was concern about driver privacy, but to over-come that hurdle, the agency planned “to use a waiver by the employee; they’re going to have to allow this information to be used, and if they don’t, they won’t be allowed to continue in the process.”
Even with the upcoming regulation, expected sometime in 2008, Hill said legislation supporting the database would “make it easier” for the agency to avoid potential litiga-tion.
DeFazio said the committee “will try to give you that legislative support.”
Fred McLuckie, Teamsters union legislative director, said a national system “may be preferable to this data being collected on a state-by-state basis,” but it should go for-ward only when there are sufficient safeguards for driver privacy and a way to correct errors.
Rick Craig, director of regulatory affairs for the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, said the driver group was “unconvinced of the need for a national clearing-house for positive drug and alcohol test results,” citing privacy and other concerns.
