SAFETY FIRST

Earlier this week we exhibited at the 3rd Annual Greater St. Louis Safety and Health Conference. It's put on by a topnotch organization, the Safety Council of Greater St. Louis. The Safety Council's Director is Leslie Foran who is a passionate, energetic, hardworking leader who, along with her wonderful staff, is dedicated to improving the safety of all our lives here in the St. Louis area. They offer a number of low-cost and free programs and I'd recommend checking out their web site to see what they offer.

The conference was a blast! We met a lot of people involved in safety with companies big and small. We got a ton of those “Wow, you can really do that?” responses I wrote about last week. On a couple of occasions we’d be talking with one person from a company and they would go find their boss or a co-worker and bring them back to see DrugWipe for themselves. Hopefully we’ll be able to help a lot of them out in trying to get drugs out of their workplace.

Attendees who stopped by our booth shared a lot of stories about all the trouble that drug use in the workplace causes them. One man told us that his company had an employee die this year due to an accident in which drugs were involved. Another told us that they rounded up about 20 employees a few weeks ago for a random drug test and 80% of them tested positive!

I don’t think many people realize how prevalent drugs are in the workplace. At least I didn’t until we started IDS last year. It’s really opened my eyes to what’ going on out there. We’ve tested companies with as few as 5 employees and come back with positive results for cocaine and marijuana.

And the impact of drug use on worker’s safety is huge. Government statistics indicate that drug using employees are 3.5 times more likely to be involved in an accident and 5 times more likely to file a Workers’ Comp claim. The government also estimates that 38% - 50% of Worker’s Comp claims are related to substance abuse. Bill and I have both talked with a number of people in the insurance industry who say that’s pretty conservative and it’s probably more like 50% - 65%.

In Missouri, the liability of an employer as related to substance abuse and Workers’ Comp changed considerably last August when a new Worker’s Comp law went into affect.

The section of the law related to substance abuse is Section 287.120. Provision 287.120.6 states:

Where the employee fails to obey any rule or policy adopted by the employer related to a drug-free workplace or the use of alcohol or nonprescribed controlled drugs in the workplace, the compensation and death benefit provided for herein shall be reduced by fifty percent if the injury was sustained in conjunction with the use of alcohol or nonprescribed controlled drugs.

If, however, the use of alcohol or nonprescribed controlled drugs in violation of the employer’s rule or policy is the proximate cause of the injury, then the benefits or compensation otherwise payable under this chapter for death or disability shall be forfeited.


The lessons to take away from this:

Lesson #1: In Missouri, employers NEED to have a strong drug-free workplace policy.

Lesson #2: Drugs don’t pay! If you get yourself injured or killed on the job and it was because you were using drugs – you and your family aren’t getting any money from Workers’ Comp.

Workers’ Comp and safety are just one of many issues that are adversely impacted by drug activity in the workplace. I’ll talk about many of those other issues in the coming weeks and months.

We look forward to next year’s conference and, please, stay safe out there!!