Cognitive Daily

Drug abuse at work: The scale of the problem

Posted by Dave Munger on July 27, 2007
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CBS News has a pretty good video describing the prevalence of alcohol and drug abuse in the workplace. Perhaps most shocking is the statistic depicted in this info-graphic:

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Our friend Suzanne Greenlee is the benefits director for the food service company Sodhexo USA, and CBS interviewed her for the story. Her company offers free anonymous substance abuse counseling for all its employees, but I suspect that’s quite rare in the industry. In a longer version of the interview not available online, Suzanne says that her company believes it saves more money by addressing the problem than the costs it would incur if the problem was ignored.

For more on how companies are dealing with substance abuse among employees, check out this excellent segment from HBO’s Addiction series.

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Comments

  1. #1 Science Avenger
    July 27, 2007

    Talking about “drugs” is like talking about “drinks”, defined as “consumed liquids”. Marijuana and methamphedamine are every bit as different.

  2. #2 Vince Williams
    July 29, 2007

    How ironic that the segment was preceded by a Tylenol commercial.

    By spending hundreds of millions of dollars to persuade people to waste their money on drugs of dubious effectiveness, drug companies cause far more injury to society than construction workers smoking joints.

    And their practice of developing drug analogs first, and then searching for diseases to apply them to gives the lie to their vaunted dedication to ‘helping’ humankind.

    I would call them ‘vultures’, but I don’t want to insult the functionally superior inhabitants of our planet.

    The war on drugs is war on the working class, blacks, and Hispanics.

  3. #3 Vince Williams
    July 29, 2007

    @ “drugs of dubious effectiveness”: I wasn’t referring to Tylenol specifically.