Re-energizing the roots of employee assistance: tapping federal workplace substance abuse efforts.

"In the 'drug-free workplace' world, the drug-testing industry has, in many cases, supplanted EAPs as the experts. I'd really like to see EAPs be recognized not only for all the things they do in wellness and critical incident stress and other things, but also as the experts in the workplace on substance abuse and addiction.

A number of years ago at an EAPA conference, I had the privilege to speak about drug-free workplace programs. After the conference, a news reporters from one of the workplace substance abuse newsletters contacted me and wanted to know whether there had been any other presentations at EAPA having to do with substance abuse, chemical dependency, or the like. I was dumbfounded--I searched the entire program and couldn't find any other such presentations. Mine was the only one on substance abuse. That was a little bit discouraging.

I'm very pleased that, at this conference, I'm not the only one presenting on substance abuse. There are some excellent discussions and presentations, not to mention a plenary presentation on the neuroscience of addiction, a nice session yesterday from the labor perspective on their drug-free workplace programs, and a wonderful one on EAPs getting people back on track following drug-testing experiences and other substance abuse problems. So I think we're going in the right direction, and I'd like to see us keep going in that direction.

The focus of my presentation is how to reassert EAPs' expertise in this area. I think in order to do that, one of the things EAPs have to come to peace with is that drug testing is here to stay It may not he the best thing that ever happened, but I will say that in my experience--and quite frankly, I was not a believer in drug testing; in fact, I was working with the flight attendants on the union side when the Department of Transportation regulations came down the pike, and I spoke many, many times in terms of why drug testing was not such a good idea and why we really ought to look at other remedies such as EAPs--drug-testing programs have become, by and large, standard procedure in many industries, and I predict they will continue to become more institutionalized as the years go forward.

This is an issue, quite frankly, that the White House is promoting and encouraging. They've been very active in student drug testing, which, again, is not something that I personally understood or really appreciated. But the good news about the student drug-testing initiative is that every student drug-testing program also has a student assistance program. So they can go hand in hand and work together.

That's what I'd like to encourage all of you who have not done so yet to do--to make peace with drug testing. Make sure that EAPs have a central role to play in that activity--not as the drug tester, obviously, but using the EAP Core Technology to assess and refer people to treatment and get them back to work. That's really what it's all about.

Sometimes I think about why EAPs have lost their focus, and then I walk around the exhibit hall at a conference like this and I see EAP services that 20 years ago I just wouldn't have imagined--legal services, elder care, maternity care, critical incident stress, and so on. There are so many new challenges out there in the workplace today. I think that may be the reason EAPs haven't been focusing as much on substance abuse--maybe we think we've solved that problem and have moved on to others. After all, we had that 'drug war' a while ago.

Unfortunately, we didn't win it; the research continues to show that while we are making some progress on substance abuse and mental health services every year, there's still a continuing problem. We've made some progress in decreasing drug use, particularly the use of marijuana, but the non-medical use of prescription drugs has been showing a continued rise among young adults. And of the 16.4 million current adult users of illicit drugs--defined as someone 18 years or older who admits having used an illicit drug in the past 30 days--12.3 million are employed. That means about 75 percent of drug users are working.

It's not just illicit drugs that are causing problems. Alcohol use continues to be the number-one drug problem that affects the workplace, and quite frankly this is what the EAP Core Technology was all about. Alcohol affects more people and has a greater impact on the workplace than virtually any other condition, and I dare say that includes depression and a whole host of other things. In fact, of the almost 52 million adults who admit to binge drinking, about 80 percent are employed, either full-time or part-time. And of the 16 million adult heavy drinkers, about 80 percent are employed.

So, indeed, alcohol abuse continues to be a problem in the workplace. And I think EAPs have an opportunity in the workplace to intervene early with those users and abusers and reassert their role in this area."

Elena Carr, U.S. Department of Labor