Urine Drug Screening: Chemical McCarthyism

Abstract

To the Editor: Big Brother devises new ways of watching you as 1984 draws nearer. An era of chemical McCarthyism is at hand, and guilty until proved innocent is the new slogan.It is becoming recognized that urine drug screening in our society is now a commonplace event with far-reaching consequences. United States military personnel, amateur and professional athletes, race horses, probation parolees, methadone-program patients, and hospitalized overdose patients are being joined by business employees and applicants as subjects for these screenings, on whose results an addict's freedom, a boxer's world title, an employee's job, and a soldier's future employability . . .