Imagine that you hurt your back and your doctor prescribes a narcotic for the pain. Suddenly one day your employer conducts a drug test at the company and you test positive for this drug you are taking. Your employer declares that your prescription medication is unsafe and poses a safety hazard, and they terminate your employment.

Sounds impossible? Not quite. Recently an assembly line worker lost her job because she tested positive for hydrocodone that she was taking for back pain. She has since sued her employer for discrimination and invasion of privacy. The employer attests that if a prescription drug had a label warning against driving or operating machinery, then it was deemed unsafe, despite doctors' claims that many users function normally regardless of label warnings.

Quest Diagnostics, a provider of workplace drug tests, said that data pulled from more than 500,000 drug tests show that workers who were tested for drugs after accidents were highly likely to have opiates in their system than those who were tested before being hired.

Dr. Barry Sample, the director of science and technology at Quest, says that employers should come up with a consistent policy that clearly states the drugs employees might be tested for and under what circumstances, and that supervisors should be trained to notice any signs of impairment to warrant any testing.

The worker at the center of this case believes that there should be some kind of program where workers are taught how the medicine they take can affect them, or to at least work something out with them, but that option was not offered.

What do you think of drug testing in the workplace? Do share your thoughts.