Battling the Enemy Within

By Janice Castro.

The night shift at the General Motors plant in Wentzville, Mo., was busy putting together Buick Park Avenues and Oldsmobile Regency 98s when ten policemen quietly entered the factory. Making their way along the assembly line, the officers clapped handcuffs on twelve workers. They had allegedly sold cocaine, hashish, marijuana and LSD with an estimated street value of $250,000 to two young undercover agents who had been hired by GM to pose as assembly-line workers.

Alarmed by reports of widespread drug and alcohol use at its Laughlin, Nev., generating station, the Southern California Edison Co. organized its own raid. Corporate managers and security officers cut the personal padlocks off 400 employee lockers to rummage through the contents. They searched cars in the parking lot and even frisked a few workers. Seven employees were fired for possessing drugs or alcohol at work in violation of company rules.

Twenty Unocal employees were startled when company cars and vans converged on their remote oil-pumping station in Piru, Calif., and discharged a cordon of private security officers and drug-sniffing dogs to search the grounds. No drugs were found, but six workers were later suspended when urine tests demanded by the company showed traces of marijuana. The six were reinstated only after they agreed to submit to urinalysis regularly in the future.

In the old days, an oilworker might have decked his boss for asking him to supply a urine sample, and workplace raids by company vigilantes, let alone police, would have been unthinkable. But in the old days, it was rare for someone to come to work stoned on drugs or for managers to have to worry about cokeheads in the office. Not anymore, and not just in isolated instances either. Illegal drugs have become so pervasive in the U.S. workplace that they / are used in almost every industry, the daily companions of blue- and white- collar workers alike. Their presence on the job is sapping the energy, honesty and reliability of the American labor force even as competition from foreign companies is growing ever tougher.

Now U.S. employers have decided to strike back at the drug plague. In high- rise office towers and sprawling factory complexes, in bustling retail stores and remote warehouses, companies are cracking down on workers who get high on the job. Supervisors are watching closely for telltale signs and confronting workers who seem impaired. Employees caught with drugs are often fired on the spot, and suspected users are urged to enter rehabilitation clinics. Hundreds of companies are setting up programs to combat drugs, providing psychiatric counseling for employees, resorting to urinalysis to identify users, and in a few cases going so far as to install hidden video cameras or hire undercover agents.

A measure of the inroads drugs have made on the U.S. workplace came last week when the President's Commission on Organized Crime took the extraordinary step of asking all U.S. companies to test their employees for drug use. In an initial report based on a 32-month study, the commission also urged the Government not only to test its own workers but to withhold federal contracts from private firms that refuse to do the same. "Drug trafficking is the most serious organized-crime problem in the world today," said the commission, which argued that the Government and private companies can play a vital role in curbing demand for drugs.

The recommendations immediately stirred a fire storm of controversy. Said Representative Peter Rodino, a New Jersey Democrat who chairs the House Judiciary Committee: "Wholesale testing is unwarranted and raises serious civil liberty concerns." Agreed Democratic Representative Charles Schumer of New York: "Trying to stop organized crime's multimillion-dollar drug business by creating a police state in federal office buildings would be virtually ineffective and would create one crime to stop another."

But many business leaders have concluded that the threat posed by drugs on the job can be answered only with tough measures. Dr. Michael Walsh, chief of clinical and behavioral pharmacology at the National Institute on Drug Abuse, notes that the number of corporations that ask him for advice on how to get drugs out of the workplace has increased dramatically in the past few months. Says he: "The momentum is very, very strong at this point."

And with good reason. The costs of drug abuse on the job are staggering. The consequences range from accidents and injuries to theft, bad decisions and ruined lives. According to the Research Triangle Institute, a respected North Carolina business-sponsored research organization, drug abuse cost the U.S. economy $60 billion in 1983, or nearly 30% more than the $47 billion estimated for 1980. Other studies have found that employees who use drugs are far less productive than their co-workers and miss ten or more times as many workdays. Drug abusers are three times as likely as nonusers to injure themselves or someone else. Moreover, addicts with expensive habits are much more likely to steal cash from a company safe, products from a warehouse or equipment from a factory.

Concern is greatest, of course, in industries where mistakes can cost lives. Since 1975, about 50 train accidents have been attributed to drug- or alcohol- impaired workers. In those mishaps, 37 people were killed, 80 were injured, and more than $34 million worth of property was destroyed. In 1979, for instance, a Conrail employee was high on marijuana at the controls of a locomotive when he missed a stop signal and crashed into the rear of another train at Royersford, Pa. The accident killed two people and caused damages amounting to $467,500.

In the airline industry, the code of pride and honor that has kept most pilots and air-traffic controllers sober over the years may be seriously eroding. In September 1984 a pilot for a major international airline called 800-COCAINE, a New Jersey-based hot line that provides treatment referral and information. He said that he had been up for three days straight snorting cocaine and that he was scheduled to fly a passenger jet to Europe that night. He was feeling exhausted and paranoid, he confided, but was sure he could stay awake and alert if he just kept taking drugs. "Call in sick and get some sleep," urged the hot-line counselor. The counselor, who never found out what the pilot finally decided to do, says that such calls are not unusual.

The National Transportation Safety Board attributed a fatal 1983 air accident to illegal drug abuse. Two crewmen died when a cargo flight crash- landed at Newark airport. Autopsies showed that the pilot had been smoking marijuana, possibly while flying. In an incident last March, a New York-based air-traffic controller who had been injecting three grams of cocaine daily at work put a DC-10 jumbo jet on a collision course with a private plane. At the last moment, the smaller aircraft made an emergency landing.

Even the space program has not been immune to the drug plague. Dr. Howard Frankel, who was medical director of Rockwell's space shuttle division from 1981 until 1983, says that he treated employees who were hallucinating on the job, collapsing from cocaine overdoses and using marijuana, PCP, heroin and numerous other drugs while they worked. Frankel estimates that 20% to 25% of the Rockwell workers at the Palmdale, Calif., plant, the final assembly point for the four space shuttles, were high on the job from drugs, alcohol or both. During the construction of the spacecraft, police raided Rockwell's shuttle assembly plant in Downey, Calif., several times after undercover agents bought cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines and marijuana from employees. Nine workers were fired.

No evidence suggests that Rockwell's drug situation had anything to do with the Challenger tragedy. The solid rocket booster that is suspected of causing the explosion was made by Chicago-based Morton Thiokol, and no reports of drug use among its employees have surfaced. Nonetheless, any drug abuse among production workers in the space program or the defense industry carries grave risks. Says Frankel: "In this kind of ultra-high-tech work, the guy who makes the little adjustments, the screwer-on of parts, the bolter of nuts, is just as important as the project's chief engineer."

Besides fearing that stoned employees may do shoddy work on missiles and planes, defense industry executives are concerned about security. They fear that addicts on the payroll might sell defense secrets to support their habits. Moreover, because criminal narcotics-possession charges could lead to the loss of security clearances necessary for many jobs in the defense industry, drug abusers are extremely vulnerable to blackmail. Says R. Richard Heppe, the president of Lockheed California: "We do a lot of highly classified work here, and people with these problems are much higher security risks."

No one knows precisely how pervasive drug use on the job is. But there is no doubt that during the past couple of decades, illegal drugs have become deeply ingrained in American life. Federal experts estimate that between 10% and 23% of all U.S. workers use dangerous drugs on the job. Other research + indicates that people who take drugs regularly, some 25% of the population according to Government calculations, are likely to use them at work or at least sometimes be on a high when they arrive at the workplace. In a 1985 study conducted by the 800-COCAINE counselors, 75% of those calling the hot line reported that they sometimes took coke while on the job, and 69% said they regularly worked under the influence of cocaine. One-fourth said they used cocaine at work every day.

Marijuana was once the most common drug in the workplace, but cocaine may now have become No. 1. According to estimates by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the number of Americans who take marijuana at least occasionally declined between 1979 and 1982, the most recent years for which statistics are available, from 22 million to 20 million. During the same period, the ranks of cocaine users increased from 15 million to 22 million. The problem seems to be most prevalent among young adults. NIDA estimated last week that nearly two-thirds of the people now entering the work force have used illegal drugs and 44% have taken them during the past year.

Cocaine is an increasingly popular drug to use at work, partly because the intense high it generates often gives users the false feeling that they can do their jobs better and faster. Moreover, cocaine is easy to hide. It is generally snorted rather than smoked, and does not give off an odor as marijuana does. Users have devised ingenious ways of taking the drug right in front of their co-workers without being detected. Some, for example, buy squeeze-bottle medications for sinus congestion, empty out the medicine and refill the bottles with cocaine. Cocaine vaporizes at temperatures above 80 degrees , so merely carrying it in a pocket keeps the container close to normal body temperature of 98.6 degrees and the coke ready for sniffing.

In many offices, drugs are as easy to obtain as paper clips from the stock room. Some dealers provide messenger services to deliver cocaine and marijuana right to their customers' desks. In other cases, users send unwitting company messengers on "business" errands to pick up packages that actually contain narcotics.

Dangerous drugs can be found at every level of industry, from the shop floor to the executive suite. Says Naomi Behrman, a counselor for AT&T/Bell Labs: "You can no longer assume that because a person wears a three-piece suit and a necktie, you can rule out drug abuse."

In fact, many managers are in an excellent position to hide drug habits because they can close their office doors and delegate work to others. Company officers also travel frequently, making it easier to use narcotics on the sly. Chief executives who order up internal investigations of drug problems are often shocked when the trail leads to some of their most trusted aides. Says Special Agent George Miller of the Drug Enforcement Administration: "Companies never think of drug use on the executive level. They always think it's on the assembly line."

Sometimes the chief is the culprit. Chairman Terence Fox of Iroquois Brands, the Greenwich, Conn.-based maker of Champale malt liquor, was arrested in November after being discovered in a hotel room with $8,000 worth of cocaine. Last year Miller Brewing filed a $19 million civil suit against Robert Landau Associates, a New York City sports-promotion firm that had gone into bankruptcy proceedings in 1984. The brewer, a former client of Landau Associates, charged that President Robert Landau spent $2 million of Miller's promotional money on cocaine, racehorses and other personal expenses. Landau has denied the allegations.

Though drug abuse is most likely to make the headlines when it involves Hollywood celebrities and sports stars, the problem is also epidemic among doctors, lawyers and other professionals in high-pressure, fast-paced work environments. In the high-tech firms of California's Silicon Valley, sudden wealth has created a thirst for instant gratification and expensive highs. One former employee at a computer company tells of being the office cocaine pusher for three years. Says he: "It was made to order. I had an instant clientele--hundreds of people who worked with me."

In the heady bull markets of the past two years, more than a few hot young brokers on Wall Street have stoked up on drugs for frenetic trading sessions. Steve, a stockbroker and recovering addict, snorted cocaine in his office, in men's rooms, even in elevators. "It woke me up and gave me strength," he recalls. "It made me feel like J.P. Morgan."

Up and down Madison Avenue, cocaine has become almost a currency in advertising agencies. Coke for models, photographers and artists is buried in budgets. Copywriters use cocaine to jump-start their creative juices. Independent producers supply it to agency representatives on location. In a survey of 300 advertising directors conducted by Advertising Age magazine in August, 45 reported cases in which cocaine had been used as under-the- counter compensation. Sometimes, ad agency employees hire production companies to make commercials only if the firms offer bribes of cocaine.

But drug abuse is not just a by-product of life in the fast lane. Drugs are also used by multitudes of blue-collar workers to relieve the deadening boredom of menial jobs. Says Miriam Ingebritson, clinical director for a St. Louis-based consulting firm that provides drug-therapy services for IBM, the Cincinnati Reds and the City of St. Louis: "Frequently we find that it is not the exhilarating high that people are looking for, but rather to escape from tedium."

GM, Ford and other manufacturers with large blue-collar work forces have discovered that drug dealers offer virtually an alternative cafeteria service in their plants. Instead of meat loaf, macaroni and apple pie, the choices are marijuana, hashish, cocaine and amphetamines. For Cherry Electrical Products, a semiconductor and electrical-equipment manufacturer near Chicago, the seamy side of company life came to light in October 1984, when two employees were arrested late one evening for selling marijuana to an undercover policeman. President Peter Cherry then discovered that drugs were being peddled in the company's stock room. One woman employee with an unmanageably expensive habit had allegedly become a parking-lot prostitute during breaks. Within three weeks, 20 workers who were accused of taking or selling drugs quit or were fired. Says Cherry: "It was like Pandora's box was opened. We were stunned."

Some workers get so freaked out on drugs that they become a menace to everyone around them. A meter reader for a Washington utility became crazed after taking PCP and ran from one backyard to another. He hid behind bushes and jumped out and screamed at frightened neighborhood residents until police arrested him. In New Jersey a dentist who injected himself with three syringes of cocaine every morning as he drove down the turnpike to work began to complain that the fillings he was putting into patients' mouths were talking to him. His partners quickly forced the dentist to sell his share of the practice.

Many professionals have ridden their drug habits to bankruptcy and homelessness. Bob, a Wall Street trader, was so hooked on cocaine that he lost his job and wound up eating out of garbage cans and living on the streets. David, an attorney in New Jersey, spent $60,000 on cocaine in 1983 and frequently free-based cocaine in his office. Fearing that invisible people were watching him at all hours, he nailed shut the windows in his house and covered them with sheets, but still believed they were coming through the walls. Both men now regularly attend meetings of Cocaine Anonymous, a national self-help group patterned on the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous. While David is back on the job, many of the people he used to get high with were not so fortunate. Says he: "A lot of my old friends are dead."

Until recently, many companies have been slow to respond to their growing drug dilemmas. They did not realize how widespread the abuse was and had no idea how to combat it. Managers were not sure how to recognize the signs of drug use and were often afraid to confront workers who appeared to be high. Many executives doubted that the problem was serious enough to warrant a crackdown that might generate bad publicity.

But the smoking, snorting and dealing on the job eventually became so blatant and the results so tragic that companies could no longer afford to ignore what was going on. New York-based Capital Cities/ ABC woke up to its drug troubles in 1984 after an employee collapsed at work, and subsequently died, from a cocaine overdose. Shortly thereafter, Capital Cities, which later acquired ABC, discovered organized drug dealing in one of its divisions. Last year, according to Dr. Robert Wick, corporate medical director for American Airlines, a computer operator who was high on marijuana failed to load a crucial tape into a major airline's computer reservations system. Result: the system was out of service for some eight hours, costing the company about $19 million. Says Wick: "That was an awfully expensive joint by anybody's standards."

Such revelations have broken down corporate resistance to taking a strong stand against drugs. Psychiatrist Robert DuPont, a former director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse who now helps companies set up antidrug programs, says that employers "have gone through a mental barrier that was blocking them before. What was that barrier? The barrier was that it was a private matter. The barrier was that it was not very important. The barrier was that there was not anything to be done about it anyhow. The barrier was that it was a societal problem and not a work-related problem. There was a whole series of barriers that kept the companies from moving, and they are all falling down."

Employee attitudes toward drugs are slowly changing as well. Workers have long been reluctant to turn in their colleagues for drug use. They have been afraid of ruining their co-workers' careers and of being ostracized for snitching. In addition, they could not be sure that management would believe them or back them up. But more and more employees are becoming fed up with working alongside people who are stoned. Says a news correspondent for a major New York City TV station: "After all, you work for days sometimes to make a story the best you can, and then some drug-abusing idiot pushes the wrong button when you're on the air. Why should I put up with that?"

Once companies acknowledge and confront the drug threat, their first task is to establish a consistent policy that is both firm and fair. Typically, companies decide to dismiss workers caught taking or selling drugs on the job but also offer a helping hand to users who voluntarily admit their problem.

To help put impaired workers on the road to rehabilitation, about 30% of the FORTUNE 500 largest industrial corporations have established in-house employee-assistance programs, commonly known as EAPs. Many of these programs were set up during the 1970s for workers suffering from alcoholism, and have since been expanded to include drug abusers. The motivation behind the EAPs has been economic as well as humanitarian. Says Drug Consultant Ingebritson: "It's much easier to help a person who has been on the job for nine years than it is to hire and train someone to replace him."

Mobil's drug-treatment program is fairly typical. Employees with a problem can call or stop by the medical departments at any of the oil company's facilities around the world. Supervisors who spot unusual behavior that is affecting job performance can encourage workers to contact an employee- assistance counselor. After initial medical examinations and counseling sessions, patients are generally referred to a hospital or outpatient drug clinic for treatment, which may take from four to six weeks. During that period the employees are given sick leave with pay, and their status is kept confidential. Company health-insurance benefits pay all the treatment costs. Once employees return to the job, they are allowed to attend follow-up counseling sessions during work hours. Says Dr. Joseph M. Cannella, Mobil's medical director: "We like to identify people, get them treated and back to work." He claims that Mobil's rehabilitation efforts have been 70% to 75% % successful.

Many companies, including Capital Cities/ABC, Xerox and Dean Witter, have made it easier for employees to seek help by setting up nationwide hot lines with toll-free 800 numbers that workers and their families can call to get advice on drug problems. The service offers a guarantee of privacy to employees who are reluctant to approach their bosses or stop by medical departments. Once the drug user is on the phone, the hot-line counselor can encourage him to get help through an EAP or local clinical program.

While helping current employees to quit taking drugs, many companies are working to make sure that they do not take on any additional drug users. More and more firms are requiring job applicants to submit to new, sophisticated laboratory tests that can detect traces of narcotics in urine samples, and before long, companies may also be testing hair (see box).

The list of corporations that ask all job applicants to undergo urinalysis is like a roll call of the largest and most prestigious firms in the U.S. Among them: Exxon, IBM, Lockheed, Shearson Lehman, Federal Express, United Airlines, TWA, Hoffmann-La Roche, the New York Times. On March 1, Du Pont became the newest name on the list. And this spring, AT&T, which already tests applicants at plants where volatile chemicals are handled, will start screening all potential employees at its manufacturing facilities for drug use. About one-fourth of the FORTUNE 500 companies now screen applicants for drugs, and an additional 20% are expected to begin doing so this year.

An increasing number of firms are testing not only applicants but also certain classes of current employees. Rockwell, for example, makes test pilots give periodic urine samples. Dozens of companies, including the Los Angeles Times, Southern Pacific railroad and Georgia Power, an electric utility, now demand that employees take drug tests if their supervisors think they may be impaired. All the major U.S. oil companies have instituted such a policy for workers on drilling rigs. Since last month, a Federal Railroad Administration regulation has required some 100,000 employees who operate U.S. railroads to undergo urinalysis whenever their supervisors think they may be high. This week a new regulation takes effect requiring workers to take a test when they have been involved in a serious accident.

Drug testing of all employees is still rare, but some organizations are considering that step, especially in professional sports. After the New England Patriots suffered the most humiliating Super Bowl defeat (46-10) in history last January, the team admitted that several of its key players had been using illegal drugs during the season. Coach Raymond Berry has asked all players to submit to random drug testing. Two weeks ago, Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth suspended seven players for one year without pay for using and distributing drugs. To be reinstated, the players must give 10% of their 1986 salaries to drug-rehabilitation programs, contribute 100 hours of community service in each of the next two years and agree to drug testing on demand for the rest of their careers.

The largest employer to test all personnel is the U.S. military. Alarmed by rampant drug use among men and women in uniform, the Pentagon began widespread random testing in 1982, starting with the Army. At first, the program was developed so fast and handled so sloppily that it gave drug testing a bad name. Hundreds of soldiers claimed that they were falsely accused of being drug users because of inaccurate results.

In July 1984, the Army admitted that in tests of 60,000 soldiers, about half of the urine samples had been mishandled. In many cases, samples were mixed up in the lab, and service members received results from specimens that were not their own. Since then, the Pentagon has improved procedures and extended the tests to all branches of the armed forces. It claims to have cut drug use by military personnel in half since 1980.

The most widely used new urine test, known as EMIT (for Enzyme Multiplied Immunoassay Test), is believed to be 97% accurate in the best of circumstances. But since laboratory workers often mishandle or accidentally contaminate the samples during analysis, the rate of accuracy may be considerably less. Because of such doubts, few companies fire employees or refuse to hire applicants on the basis of only one test. If the first test indicates drug use, employers generally try to confirm that result with a second urinalysis using a different laboratory technique.

A few companies are waging a more active--and clandestine--war against drugs. GM, for example, has used private undercover agents supervised by the police to make some 200 arrests at its plants within the past 18 months. In the sting operation at the Wentzville plant, the company was able to hire two young former narcotics agents unobtrusively when it added a second shift. Dressed in T shirts and jeans, they mingled easily with the assembly-line % workers. During a six-month period they bought everything from cocaine to LSD from the plant's alleged pushers. Says Dr. Robert Wiencek, GM's director of occupational safety and health: "We want any individual who is selling drugs in our plants to know that his days as a GM employee are numbered. We're not going to tolerate it." Last week Electronic Data Systems, a subsidiary of GM, began firing employees in the Detroit area who had failed drug-screening tests given to 104 security guards, clerks and secretaries in February.

Some firms are literally calling in the dogs. Canine detectives, trained to recognize the smell of marijuana and other drugs, have nosed around offshore oil platforms owned by Pennzoil, Mobil and Exxon. Atlanta's Alpha Academy of Dog Training supplies drug-sniffing German shepherds, springer spaniels and golden retrievers to corporate clients and law-enforcement agencies.

The corporate battle against drugs is a bonanza for dozens of small companies that provide the weapons. Private laboratories that perform drug tests, for example, are growing rapidly. So are security firms that supply undercover agents. Professional Law Enforcement, a five-year-old Dayton firm, has doubled its business in the past year. Says President William Taylor III: "Companies are starting to recognize that they have to attack the problem in a different way. You can't send a standard security guard or a management person out there to handle a person dealing in drugs."

Because narcotics abuse spawns stealing, companies that specialize in investigating employee theft are much in demand. A Baltimore firm called Loss Management provides its clients with a national hot line and has solved cases with the help of office tipsters who report theft at their place of work. In one case, a clerk called the hot line when the invoices she was processing did not add up correctly. As it turned out, three top managers at the company were embezzling money to buy cocaine.

Though employee support for antidrug programs is growing, some workers feel that their companies are going too far. At the Kansas City Star and Times, two newspapers owned by Capital Cities/ABC, employees were stunned in January when management proposed to use narcotics-sniffing dogs as part of an experimental antidrug effort. Though newsroom wags passed around dog biscuits, most employees were in no mood to laugh. They felt that using the dogs would be an implicit accusation and an unwarranted and heavy-handed action. After heated staff protests, Capital Cities/ABC backed down and called off the experiment.

Much of the criticism of corporate antidrug efforts focuses on the growing use of urinalysis (see box). Opponents charge that urine tests are a particularly invasive and humiliating method of determining whether a worker has used drugs. Says Bus Driver Randy Kemp, whose employer, Seattle Metro, requires employees who appear to be impaired to submit blood and urine samples: "You've got to have a search warrant to search my house. Well, my body is a lot more sacred than my home."

Some executives agree. Hewlett-Packard and McDonnell Douglas, for example, do not ask job applicants or employees to take drug tests. Says Hewlett- Packard Spokesman Gene Endicott: "It's an invasion of the employee's privacy."

Another objection to urinalysis is that companies are trying to control what workers do in their private time as well as during working hours. Because the tests do not reveal when a drug was used, workers could be penalized or fired for what they do in the evening or at weekend parties. Workers' rights advocates maintain that corporate antidrug policies can be particularly unfair in the case of marijuana, which has been virtually decriminalized in some states and cities. Says Los Angeles Labor Lawyer Glenn Rothner: "Termination for marijuana use, or worse, for simply having minute traces of marijuana in the body when tested is sentencing these employees to the equivalent of corporate capital punishment for an offense that would only merit a $100 fine in California."

The reaction of organized labor to antidrug efforts has been mixed. Unions generally support corporate drug-rehabilitation programs, but opposition to urinalysis is growing. Says Douglas Maguire, director of the labor assistance program for the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO: "Labor is not supporting testing in the workplace. As part of a physical exam for new employees, it is acceptable, but otherwise there are problems of violating civil rights." Some unions also fight against firings of workers with drug problems. Rockwell's Frankel quit as the company's medical director in 1983 partly because, he says, management repeatedly gave in to union demands that drug abusers be reinstated in their jobs.

Many executives are becoming increasingly impatient with the objections of labor leaders and civil libertarians. Says Peter Cherry of Cherry Electrical: "We have a right to say how you behave at the workplace. You don't bring a gun to work. You can't come to work naked. You're not allowed to yell 'Fire!' in the middle of the factory. We're just asking people to be fit while they're on the job."

Because drug use by workers can result in shoddy, unsafe products and accidents in the workplace, executives argue, individual rights must be subordinated to the broader welfare of fellow employees and customers. "We're not on a witch hunt," says Personnel Manager John Hunt of Southern California Edison. "Our No. 1 concern here is safety. We also have a responsibility to our customers. Our meter readers go into people's homes." Independent experts share the executives' concerns. Says Peter Bensinger, a former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration who is now a leading consultant on corporate drug problems: "Companies do have a right and responsibility to establish sound working conditions. We're talking about people and their safety, and our own individual rights to work in a safe environment." Company officials also point out that a strong stance against drugs is basically humanitarian because it ultimately benefits workers who use them as much as it does the firm.

Furthermore, the argument that what employees do in their own time is none of the company's business is being undermined by new evidence of the lingering effects of drug use. In November, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the Palo Alto Veterans Administration Medical Center published the results of a study on how marijuana use affects the ability of pilots to land planes. The pilots in the experiment smoked marijuana and then tested their skills in flight simulators. A full day after taking the drug, long after any sensation of being high had passed, the pilots were still swerving dangerously upon landing. One "crashed" his plane beside the runway. The researchers, who are now expanding the study, concluded that marijuana users may have difficulty performing complex mechanical tasks or doing work that demands quick reactions for 24 hours after smoking the drug.

While it is still too early to measure the success of the corporate war against drugs, some companies can already cite impressive results. Commonwealth Edison, a Chicago-based electric utility, started an antidrug education and rehabilitation program in 1982, offering treatment to users who came forward and threatening to fire those caught with drugs at work. The company also gives urine tests to job applicants. Since the program started, absenteeism is down 25%, and medical claims, which had been rising steadily at an average rate of 23% annually, rose only 6% last year. Moreover, the company had fewer on-the-job accidents in 1985 than in any previous year. Says Vice President J. Patrick Sanders: "I don't think that all of the improvements are directly related to the drug program. But it's got to be more than coincidental."

The corporate campaign against drugs may do more, however, than create safer, more productive workplaces. It may also begin to stem the plague of drug use in America. As more companies require job applicants to prove that they are drug free, it will become increasingly difficult to use drugs and make a living. The economic deterrent may begin to succeed where the legal deterrent has failed. Says Walsh of the National Institute on Drug Abuse: "We feel that if Big Business continues as it has in the last year to develop more and more stringent kinds of policies, it eventually will reduce the demand for illicit substances. It may be very effective in changing the way people view drug taking in this country."

Many executives believe that they can make a difference far beyond the office doors or the factory gates by insisting that their employees stay away from drugs. Says Capital Cities/ABC President Daniel Burke: "I consider drugs damn dangerous. I believe that my responsibility is such that my position against drugs has to be clearly understood by everyone who works under my direction." If companies can help employees kick the drug habit, the effort will pay dividends to business--and society--that cannot be measured in dollars and cents.

With reporting by Jonathan Beaty/Los Angeles, Barbara Dolan/Chicago, and Jeanne McDowell/ New York