The Unfairness of Drug Testing in Low-Wage Jobs

Drug Testing has progressively become very popular in today's low wage jobs. Jobs like Wal-Mart, Sav-on, Block Buster and many burger establishments; where the starting salary is seven dollars and twenty cents an hour requires its applicants to be drug tested before they are hired. Drug testing is based on a blue collar, white collar division.

If we don't have an academic degree our privacy gets raped, but if we are able to get a degree America doesn't set up boundaries for us. Although drug testing is an excellent tool to maintain a healthy and safe workplace, it is unfair and unjust to the low wage working class because it targets them. For instance; doctors, surgeons, and even teachers are not required to be drug tested as often as low wage workers.

Two sources that prove that drug testing in the U.S is unfair and unjust are Nickel and

Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich and Drug Abuse, Opposing Viewpoints by Tamara L. Roleff. For example, Barbara Ehrenreich gives us an appropriate quote when she states that, "if you want to stack Cheerios boxes or vacuum hotel rooms in chemically fascist America, you have to be willing to squat down and pee in front of a health worker,"

(Ehrenreich 14). She cleverly uses the word fascism in her quote as a way to imply that low wage workers are oppressed by the higher authoritarian power; that is the owner and (Girarte 2) employer of these jobs. Roleff also points this out when he states that "drug tests are discriminatory because the majority of ... who were tested were low-income ..." (Roleff 119). Drug tests are in fact discriminatory, and like Roleff said the majority of those who get drug tested are low-income workers. He did not mention upper class citizens getting d...

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...ult, and some times it does not give a result at all. It is unfair because it only targets certain workers; mainly low wage employees. It is unjust because people are automatically accused of using drugs, and that is why the drug test is given. Drug testing should not be abolished, but it should be a more controlled issue since it is something everyone in the US must go through.

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Works Cited

Ehrenreich, Barbara. Nickel and Dimed. Henry and Company, LLC

Publishers since 1866. New York: 2003. 14-15.

Roleff, L. Tamara. Drug Abuse. A part of The Thompson Corporation.

Greenhaven Press Michigan: Thomson Gale 2005. 141-148.

Hosseini, Khaled. The Kite Runner. Khaled Hosseinin New York: Penguin Group Inc.

2005. 3-34.