Ethics concepts and discussions

Art Politics

Using the utilitarianism theory to examine the question of whether to make drug testing legal in the workplace is an interesting study. The utilitarianism theory states that an action is ethical if it promotes happiness in the majority of people that such an action will affect. In order to justify such an action as allowing for legal drug testing in the workplace it must therefore be shown that a decision such as this one will be beneficial to the majority of individuals in the workplace, especially when compared to the right to privacy that many individuals will be questioning when told that they will no longer be able keep their drug use private by claiming privacy.

The problem then is to discern how many will be affected by giving up their right to privacy vs. how many will be affected by having to be randomly drug tested. In order to accomplish this comparison the numbers have to be compared as apples to apples. One method to do this is by first establishing the population of the entity being discussed. In this case it would be everyone affected by the ruling, ie; everyone in the workplace not exempted by the ruling. It could be estimated that the population of such a group would be approximately 100 million people.

Secondly the study would have to compare that with how many people use drugs and would be worried about such testing.

This could be compared to the drug using public in general which is between five and ten percent of the population and "surveys showed that 16% of college students reported recent marijuana use in 1999, up from 13% in 1993" (Gledhill-Hoyt 2000-page 1655).

This would lead to a conclusion of between five and ten million people being worried about drug testing, unless (of course) the group included only college students, then the number would be closer to 16 million drug users.

This number would then be compared to the number of people who worry about having their privacy violated. Since it is presumed that more than 16% of the population worry about such items as government intervention into their daily lives, and their concern about how to keep their private information to themselves. One study stated, "protests from certain quarters prompt public-sector officials to think long and hard about how to balance open government and the right to privacy" (Douglas 2006-page 1). With this information in mind, the study would have to lean towards the better good for most people being when their privacy is respected rather than catching individuals who are using drugs.