Speaker: Drug, booze abuse rising in workplaces

WILBUR — Employers and workers who intervene in a co-worker’s substance abuse are the only ones who will stem the rising rate of workplace drug and alcohol abuse, said Dan Harmon, chairman of the Drugfree Workplace Legislative Work Group.

Anyone else is an enabler.

For more than an hour Friday morning, Harmon outlined the alarming rates of substance abuse in Oregon at a forum in the offices of Alcan Cable. The forum was attended by several lawmakers and representatives of some of the area’s largest companies.

Annually, substance abuse costs Oregon $5.9 billion.

“It’s a huge number,” Harmon said.

Included in that figure are health care costs and spending on programs related to substance abuse, on which Oregon spends $813 million annually.

“Nothing else costs this much,” said Harmon, who is also the executive vice president and general counsel of Hoffman Construction in Portland.

And then there’s the loss of productivity in the state, amounting to $4.15 billion in lost earnings.

The costs Harmon cited came from an ECONorthwest study.

Citing figures from the U.S. Department of Labor, Harmon said the American economy loses $81 billion in productivity annually because of substance abuse.

Oregon ranks among the highest in the nation in categories such as binge drinking, heavy alcohol use, substance abuse in the workplace, fatalities and injuries in the workplace, and positive testing for drugs, Harmon said.

Marijuana use among adults in the state is at 6 percent, 50 percent higher than the nation.

Despite pseudoephedrine being pulled from store shelves in 2006, and the subsequent reduction in meth labs, methamphetamine abuse in Oregon continues to worsen, Harmon said.

In 2005, Oregon ranked seventh in the nation for methamphetamine abuse.

That same year, Oregon ranked fourth in the nation for prescription drug abuse.

Over 50 percent of property crimes in the state are linked to substance abuse.

According to the Oregon Department of Human Services, more than 37,000 people in the state are in some need of substance abuse treatment or are deemed unemployable.

“And they’re a drag on the economy,” Harmon said. “There’s nothing you can look at in the state’s data and say, ‘This is not a huge problem.’”

At the same time, Oregon contends with the impact of medical marijuana use and growth across the state.

Originally designed for the seriously ill, Harmon said Oregon’s Medical Marijuana Act has now allowed 16,000 people, many of whom are in the workplace, to become cardholders for medical marijuana.

Legislative changes now allow those who suffer from severe pain, not just chronic pain, to apply for a card, Harmon said.

Only 451 of those cardholders are cancer patients, ECONorthwest has found.

That puts Harmon’s company, Hoffman Construction, and any other company that employs medical marijuana cardholders, in noncompliance with the federal government’s Drug-free Workplace Act, Harmon said.

“Your area down here has a disproportionate rate of cardholders,” Harmon said, citing figures that show southwest Oregon has three times the number of cardholders per capita as the tri-county area surrounding Portland.

In comparison, if Oregon’s medical marijuana law was written like Colorado’s, limiting prescription cards to only the truly debilitated, there would be fewer than 1,500 cardholders in the state, Harmon said. And that would eliminate the need for employers to accommodate cardholders.

Sen. Jeff Kruse, R-Roseburg, who opposes lenient laws for medical marijuana, said he supports the use of Marinol, a synthetic form of marijuana in a pill form.

Susan Morgan, a candidate for Douglas County commissioner, said she supports Kruse in his ideas.

However, she said more has to be done on a statewide level to oppose a push from metropolitan areas for marijuana legalization, which can be detrimental to rural areas.

Mike Nores, a candidate for Douglas County Sheriff, said marijuana use must decline, especially in homes with children.

“They grow up under the auspices that this is OK,” Nores said.

House Republican Leader Bruce Hanna, R-Winchester, said it shouldn’t be left up to employers to get drugs out of the workplace, and substance abuse must decline to reduce crime.

“If we can’t get these legislative solutions pushed through with your help, we’re going to have these conversations over and over again,” Hanna said.



• You can reach reporter Adam Pearson at 957-4213 or by e-mail at apearson@newsreview.info.