The Golden Age How Americans learned to stop worrying and love workplace drug testing

Reason Magazine ^ | March 2008 | Greg Beato

[secretagent]

I’m not trying to bother you, I’m trying to a continue a thread discussion, which you helped with your bar chart. Thanks!

That chart showed that the percentage of blacks using illegal drugs is higher than for whites.

And I tried to continue the discussion with a little analysis..

Anyway, I don’t have any numbers on the dollar amount of white/black/etc. illegal drug consumption. I googled for a bit and nada.

Do you have a link for your bar chart? Perhaps I can start from there.

[zeugma]

If I’m an employer why shouldn’t I know if employees/potential employees are using?

If they aren't using on the job, it is not an employer's business what  one of their employees does in his spare time.

I've long since even having more than a beer every couple of months, if even that much, but it galls me more today than it did 15 years ago that someone thinks they have a right to make me piss into a cup for them. Next time my company demands it of me, I'm really likely to offer my sample (sans bottle) to the highest executive I can find.

[ansel12]

“Do you have a link for your bar chart? Perhaps I can start from there.”

---

Here it is
http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/2k7/popDensity/popDensity.htm

[ehit88]

“Sorry, I thought you were disagreeing with ehit88’s statement:

The drug trade is not mostly supported by ghetto folks scoring dope 5 or 10 dollars at a time, the real money comes from the middle-classers coming in from the suburbs with 100, 200 dollars at a time.

That might be a true statement, even though a higher percentage of “ghetto” people use illegal drugs. Correct?”

My statement was a reply to someone further up in the thread who basically said that the WOD could be won if there were drug testing for welfare recipients.

[secretagent]

Thanks. I emailed them asking for help with the question.

[secretagent]

I know. I pinged you since post #15, addressed to you, has charts that might seem to contradict your post #14.

I pointed out that the charts compare illicit drug consumption rates, but not total numbers of users or total dollar amounts for the different racial/ethnic groups.

Hence not necessarily a contradiction.

[FrdmLvr]

Well, since you asked, here is my reasoning from my perspective. I am an art teacher. I see every child in the school because they are required to take art. This particular school is a school of choice, middle (5th grade-8th grade) and high school, 98% inner city black kids. I would say at least half of the kids in that school were either raised by their grandmothers or aunts because their mothers were crack heads. And those were just the ones I was aware of, there may be more. Now, I have taught in many suburban school districts, 98% white, and I would be hard-pressed to think of one child who's mother or father was a drug addict. I really think the group of kids in our school pretty much represent their neighborhoods in the city.

I think your graphs and charts may reflect drug activity of a certain element of the white population, rich suburban kids or young professionals looking for drugs for weekend parties.

[ansel12]

I agree with you, the quote in post 15 was ehit88.
The graph showed me that whites and Asians are underrepresented in drug use.