An employer has a legal duty to ensure, the health, safety and welfare at work of all the employees, to protect the health and safety of visitors, as well as anyone else who may be affected by the work undertaken.

Employees who may be under the influence of drink or drugs whilst at work, or during working hours, can be defined as risks.

Because of the safety risks, workplaces are advised to have a policy on the issue. The policy could be drawn up between employer and staff, or staff health and safety representatives.

It is important to remember that even where substance misuse takes place outside of work, the effects can persist long after the point of consumption, seriously impacting an employee’s performance at work by impairing their judgment and concentration. Therefore, appropriate measures must be taken in order to ensure that the staff are not a danger to either themselves or others

Some job roles such as driving or operating heavy lifting equipment, or using machinery, electrical equipment or ladders are even more in this aspect and the legislation in the Republic of Turkey clearly states that (official gazette of Türkiye). In the above-mentioned jobs, the misuse of drugs or alcohol could have disastrous effects for the employee, co-workers, members of the public and the environment.

Based on all the above an employer may decide to test randomly employees for drugs.

Our laboratory performs these tests by highly respecting privacy and by the presence of a witness. Member of the same sex can be asked for intimacy.

The most common package is a urine test for cannabis, cocaine, amphetamine, methamphetamine, benzodiazepine, and opiates.

The presence of drugs can be detected in urine, for most drugs, for up to three or four days after use, although in the case of some drugs such as cannabis and benzodiazepine they can be detected for several weeks, especially after heavy use. Drug use can be detected in blood for roughly the same period or slightly less, and for an even shorter period in saliva. Most drugs can however be detected in hair for up to 90 days.

The above mentioned detections are performed in our laboratory in  highly reliable methodologies.  The biological sample is firstly put through a screening test. Although “false positives” are rare in screening tests nowadays, they may be expected, so if a sample proves positive it it is  subject to a confirmation test which is more precise.

Even once a positive result is confirmed, the person who gave the sample is interviewed by a medical doctor to find out if anything else could have resulted in the positive result.