Pharma Parties and the Youth

Throughout the civilized world, the youth of our nations have found a new kind of party. So called “Pharma parties” are events where each participant in the party brings their household stash of legal drugs. Often, the next step is to put all of the drugs into one big pot or hat or something and for everyone to draw a random drug, which will take them into a different world, psychologically.

Because legal drugs are written by prescription for specific people or they are standard over the counter pharmaceuticals are meant for pain relief or decongestants, each individual body will react differently…and randomly…to each drug that is brought to the pharma party.

When the youth of our nation has made a mockery of legal drugs, you can only imagine what they think of illicit drugs. Perhaps low-impact illicit substances are not effective in their minds anymore. Instead, they are looking for ways to increase their highs and lows when they take drugs. They are looking for other chemical means to find adventure. Onsite drug and alcohol testing is a testament to how many young adults have grown up from this culture and continued to abuse substances. Workplace drug testing laws protect high hazard industries, but not really anything else. Fortunately, businesses can just choose to begin utilising drug screening, and this dramatically reduces the number of workplace incidents, accidents, and fatalities which are connected to workers abusing illicit substances.

The jobsite should be safe and enjoyable. The workplace should have a minimum amount of reassurance that each individual employee is not in danger from the behavior or mental stability of his or her coworkers. What started out as these “pharma parties’ has concluded in a rather nasty set of circumstances in the workplace, where businesses really must use workplace drug testing just to make sure that their employees are safe and protected from each other and from their subordinates and superiors. The whole affair can become quite messy and dangerous, otherwise.

Mediscreen brings onsite drug & alcohol testing right to your place of business. This is a regular and standard treatment of this subject which you can use over and over, with full confidence that your employees are being provided for as well as possible.

This article has been taken from : http://www.mediscreen.net.au/articles/pharma-parties-and-the-youth/

Mediscreen and Onsite Testing Quality

Onsite testing is one of the conveniences that modern drug screening can bring to your business place. We here at Mediscreen strive to make the experience a pleasant one for you. The fact that it also saves you time and money are additional bonuses. Of course, we don’t want to take any of this for granted. Our experts are always ready to help you set up a good drug screening program for yourself. They know what they are doing, and many businesses rely upon our expertise to make sure that their employees are effectively screened. Workplace drug testing is powerful in this respect, because it delivers scientific, unbiased results. Drug testing equipment is had through our sister company, CMM Technology, but we are the ones who actually bring onsite drug and alcohol screening to your workplace. Through Mediscreen, you can save time involved and money for overhead costs for wholly laboratory work. With us, you are paying for the service and for any additional laboratory testing which may be required, but this only on an individual basis.

As far as protecting the privacy of your employees, that is in your hands, not ours. Employee records are stored onsite, that means your place of business, and you have control over how long you store them, what to keep in their records, and how and where you store them. This gives you unprecedented control over the safety and well being of your workers, rather than giving this privacy over to us. We merely seek to deliver high quality and accurate results. Thanks to Mediscreen, though, drug and alcohol testing is better than ever. We bring you what no one else can bring you: fast, high quality results right in your place of business. Who could ask for anything more? At Mediscreen, we bring it to you, we help you set up your program with us, whatever it might be, and we deliver quality results each and every time. Accuracy is the name of the game. When you are looking to implement regular onsite drug & alcohol testing, be sure to remember Mediscreen.

This article has been taken from : http://www.mediscreen.net.au/articles/mediscreen-and-onsite-testing-quality/

Marijuana, Man

Marijuana is the most common and most easy to get drug on the market today. Because its affect on the human body is downplayed by everyone, from adults to pre-teen kids, the vast majority of civilized society doesn’t consider it to be that dangerous or that much to worry about. Drug and alcohol testing, of course, doesn’t agree with this approach, but that doesn’t mean that workers don’t try to get away with what they can as often as they can. This is due to the lack of seriousness given to “weed,” as many call it.

Marijuana, Mary Jane and Weed, as the names call it is a very addictive substance because, like alcohol, it takes the edge off of stress. Like any drug it provides an escape for people who do not want to deal with their lives. Sometimes, if an employee tests positive during drug and alcohol testing, it is due to a temporary situation in their lives which may not return in the form of substance abuse. In this case, having a multiple strike company policy is particularly beneficial to employees. However, sometimes, taking the edge off becomes a lifestyle, and marijuana is used as a “gateway drug” to harder stuff, because soon our bodies become adjusted to the new norm created by abusing marijuana all the time. In this case, Mary Jane has taken another victim, so to speak, and such behavior will show up more than once during drug and alcohol testing.

Businesses have to be careful about who they allow into their workforce. In many cases, companies do not have a standard system for employee evaluation that is as effective as standard workplace drug testing and alcohol testing. In many cases, this is simply due to ignorance about the matter in which they stand. Employees cannot be predicted or read in any other way than through drug screening, and Mediscreen makes all of this possible through the convenient use of onsite drug & alcohol testing. Workplace drug testing laws are part of this attempt to standardize these systems, but many companies choose to use employee screening just because it seems to work and it seems to save them a lot of money. It does, on both accounts.

This article has been taken from : http://www.mediscreen.net.au/articles/marijuana-man/

Energy of Assurance

Workplace drug testing, if used correctly, is part of a set of reassurances that any business provides its employees. For example, a company has a set of reassurances for its workers, including the reassurances that everyone will get paid on time and that they will be able to reasonably predict their paycheck. Also, everyone understands that their bosses will not whip them, beat them, sexually harass them or enslave them. They are assured of reasonable consistency in the type of work that they will be doing for that particular business. They are assured of being in reasonably safe weather when sent out to work. They are also assure of protection from the substance abuse and therefore consequent danger of fellow employees who might try to bring that into the workplace environment.

The energy of assurance comes from everyone agreeing that there is a standard code of conduct and that everyone will abide by it. This is actually where the theory of etiquette comes from. You see, people feel more comfortable in situations where they know what to expect. They feel like they can easily and freely move in situations where they are accepted and where their behavior follows this compliance agreement. Now, when etiquette and drug screening both have the goals of making everyone feel comfortable with each other, you might say that they are even somewhat equivalent.

Assurances give to the employees regarding their safety are some of the most important assurance that a company can have. Much more than pay or bonuses, workplace safety is among the top rated reasons why employees prefer one employment over another. If you can go to your job and rest assured that you are working in safety and in security, it makes the whole thing that much more appealing. Workplace drug testing laws exist for high hazard industries where that kind of assurance is less available, and therefore all resources must be spent on making sure that there is not an additional factor of human error. Drug testing equipment is part of this, but the real conveniences comes in services like the ones offered by Mediscreen. Onsite drug & alcohol testing is easy, safe, and cost effective.

This article has been taken from : http://mediscreen.net.au/articles/energy-of-assurance/

Efficiency Expertise

Today, we have lots of efficiency. Even our own company, Mediscreen, is based upon efficiency. We provide onsite drug and alcohol testing for your company, on a regular basis, no matter where you are in Australia. You might say our business is efficiency. More than that, though, our business is reduction. We reduce the amount of time your employees must take off or cut into their personal time to get screened. We reduce the amount of time it takes to get screened, period. We reduce the money you have to pay for employee drug and alcohol testing. We reduce the effort involved for everyone, since we come to your business and we screen your workers right there onsite.

The whole process is a brilliant one. We save you everything, including time and cost, and we bring peace of mind and convenience to your company.

Onsite drug and alcohol testing is meant to be streamlined, and that is why you may be looking for just such a company as ours. We make it easy and simple. We show you how it’s done. And, more importantly, your employee records are kept safe, right there onsite. You take charge of those, rather than the documents being transferred other places or kept in another location. That should give everyone peace of mind when they understand that side of things.

Workplace drug testing is part of business maintenance. Just like your janitorial staff and your safes staff and all the other aspects of your business need proper care and maintenance, so your a drug screening and alcohol testing program needs it, too. This is all a part of what makes us so necessary to so many companies in Australia. We keep everything well maintained and in good order. You receive the data you need, you have your information at your fingertips, and it is all a part of keeping your company happy and healthy. When your employees have what they need, names, safety and security, then they can perform their work much more efficiently themselves.

Thus, the efficiency passes down from person to person through the ranks of your business until everything is running smoothly and quickly. To sign up for onsite drug & alcohol testing.

This article has been taken from : http://mediscreen.net.au/articles/efficiency-expertise/

Cashflow and Companies on the Go

Cash flow is part of the basic necessities in operating a business. In addition to paying for monthly or yearly business fees and expenses, cash flow helps to keep things running smoothly so that companies can pay for little basic expenses and help themselves along in the operations they perform every day. Not everything can be filled out on a form and applied to a monthly expense. At some point a reservoir of cash flow must be achieved so that businesses can operate freely and successfully on a daily basis. Fortunately, onsite drug & alcohol testing is part of this process. You see, when companies are mobile and do a lot of their work or sales on the go, then many of their employees have the opportunity to bend company policy and actually make use of any bad habits they have, even while on the job or in front of clients. This is, of course, a huge responsibility to take on, but many people do it quite successfully and it is not until much later that it is found that they were abusing substances while on the job. Of course, by that time, the company have lost thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars on their incompetency and their tainting of the company.

Workplace drug testing is steadily rising in popularity with mobile businesses which conduct much of their work outside of a stationary office front. Using onsite drug and alcohol screening, businesses can have their employees screened at any location in Australia, both safely and effectively. Naturally, this ability seems limited to large companies which can afford such a luxury, but this is not the case. Often, onsite drug and alcohol testing takes place in the businesses of small companies and small jobsites. A large financial backing is not necessary for such an operation. Finally, onsite drug and alcohol screening is part of retaining a cash flow of sorts, in people that is, where you can send qualified professionals out into the field to do their sales or marketing or teamwork more effectively, knowing that they are not going to let you down. It’s a reassuring thing, to be certain.

This article has been taken from : http://www.mediscreen.net.au/articles/intuition-versus-logic/

Workers Who Intellectualise Drug Abuse

The search is endless for explanations as to why people decide to use drugs they know are addictive and so can harm them physically and mentally. It is especially difficult to understand how health care professionals can become addicted, since they know the dangers of drug use and the likelihood of addiction. Or do they? Clinton B. McCracken created the term “Intellectualization of Drug Abuse” in an effort to describe how people who know better still get caught in the trap of addiction.¹ Much can be learned from his analysis of the reasons intelligent, educated and high achieving people use legal and illicit drugs with the belief they are somehow immune to addiction. Sometimes, it seems, we simply think too much.

In 2010, health professional drug abuse at Western Australia hospitals was discovered as a result of an investigation by the Corruption and Crime Commission (CCC). The results were astonishing. Nurses were stealing and self-administering prescription drugs. Co-workers failed to report incidences of clear evidence of drug abuse by nurses and doctors. When controls were instituted, the number of pain killing tablets used in a ward dropped from 16,000 annually to 200.² That was a startling indication people were probably stealing the drugs so they could sell them. The obvious conclusion is that a random alcohol drug testing program would have detected the abuse long before it required a CCC investigation. Part of the problem is that we assume people responsible for helping others maintain good health would not harm their own health. That is simply not true.

Is that the end of the story? In June 2013, in a sign of a continuing problem, a registered nurse at the Royal Brisbane Hospital was given a suspended sentence for stealing a phone, iPad, money and cash from a nurses’ station to fund a drug habit. The nurse said she stole the drugs to maintain a habit developed to cope with shift work. She was addicted to meth, ice and speed.³

Illusion of Control

The intellectualisation of drug abuse refers to people who ironically justify their drug abuse because they believe in their ability to avoid addiction due to their education and intelligence. They believe they can avoid the dangers of drug addiction and thus minimise drug harms. It is difficult to understand how thoughts can lead to such misconceptions, but they do. Intellectualisation of drug abuse leads to a person telling him or herself a substance problem does not exist and views drugs or alcohol as controllable means of finding temporary relief from stress or other work or personal problems. What makes intellectualisation different from other types of justifications is that it relies on advanced education and training to generate confidence and arrogance about the ability to control drug and alcohol abuse. In criminal thinking, people turn off their thoughts, so to speak, and act in a way they believe will relieve problems, without considering the consequences. The intellectualisation of drug abuse is different in that health professionals actually condone their behaviours in their own minds because they are convinced they can control addiction and prevent harm to personal and professional lives.

Intellectualisation is insidious because it leads to people denying the existence and scope of the problem. That may sound like others who rationalise and deny a substance abuse problem exists, but there is a difference. Rationalisation is common across drug or alcohol users. Intellectualisation is related to professional training and education that builds confidence and a sense of control. It can lead to people refusing to admit a drug or alcohol problem exists because they have an illusion of control and intentional blindness to the potentially devastating consequences of substance abuse.

Delusion of Control

The doctor who wrote the article on intellectualization was a drug addict. He freely admits he deluded himself into thinking a problem did not exist because he was able to continue to achieve and maintain personal relationships, and was able to periodically stop using marijuana and space out use of opioids. In his mind, these factors proved he was not dependent on drugs and always had total control. In reality, his drug use was causing personal and career problems.

The lesson for employers is quite clear. Random drug and alcohol testing programs are applicable to every work situation, without regard for employee skill level, education or position. People are people, whether they are doctors, nurses, miners, engineers, office workers, construction workers or any other profession. Anyone can get lured by the evil promises of drugs and alcohol and develop an addiction. Therefore, one of the most important defences against drugs in the workplace is a consistent, enterprise-wide random drug and alcohol testing program.

Mediscreen at mediscreen.net.au provides onsitedrug and alcohol testing support services that are designed to fit workplace needs. We offer a high level of professionalism to ensure that drug and alcohol programs are administered with accuracy.

This article has been taken from : http://mediscreen.net.au/articles/workers-who-intellectualise-drug-abuse/