Last updated : March 31, 2025
Research has shown that as many as 70 percent of those treated for drug abuse are typically full-time employees. The effects of drug use extend well beyond simple recreational use in the home. It will also affect your employer, co-workers and your own safety in the workplace. If the health effects aren’t a deterrent and appealing to a person’s sense of pride in their job doesn’t work, what’s left for an employer to use to reason with drug using employees? What would they like to tell employees who insist that drug use isn’t the business of their boss’s business?
Using at home won’t go unnoticed
Some drug users assume that even if they don’t actively bring the drug into the workplace, their use will go without notice by those on the job. In reality, the ripple effects of your use off the job will eventually become obvious at work as well.
Some of the effects of drug use that make themselves present in the workplace include:
- Laziness, carelessness, or forgetfulness
- Inability to stay still
- Decline in personal hygiene
- Financial trouble
- Impulsive behavior
No matter where or when you use and even if you keep to yourself, those you come in contact with will notice. There’s also a chance that drug testing will reveal what’s been going on as well.
It’s not just about you
So, the success of the company doesn’t concern you, is that it? It’s just a paycheck and it’s making money and doing fine, right? All it takes is one weak link for the chain to break. If the company is negatively affected by your irresponsible actions, who else should answer for it? If small mistakes start costing the employer, it will be passed along to the employees.
What if it’s not just a financial risk, but a safety risk you’re adding? There will be investigations if insurance gets involved. Suddenly, what seemed to be “harmless” behavior has big consequences and that will lead right back to financial trouble.
Co-workers don’t like it
Even if fellow co-workers use drugs, they won’t like having more responsibilities to make up for the mistakes and the missed work from a drug user. That co-worker that “can’t handle the high” is really every single drug user, whether that person wants to admit it to themselves or not. The problems concerning your drug use and resulting behaviors will eventually move on to become problems for those around you. It might involve those in lower positions, peers or even higher-ups. Like the success of your company, you may not give much thought to the personal feelings of your co-workers, but if you’re making more work for someone, try and consider how you’d feel if someone was causing trouble for you.
Your performance is suffering
If you’re using drugs, you are that employee that “can’t handle the high” even if you think you can. The longer you use, the more your performance suffers and it will be noticeable to someone else who is removed from your situation. You may not notice a drop in performance because of the length of use—or maybe you do and don’t think it matters. Using at home but not at work isn’t a good enough distinction. When you show up to work under the influence of drugs or alcohol (no matter when they’re used), you compromise your ability to perform necessary tasks efficiently. There is likely someone keeping track of data and if you’re not improving, that might be cause for concern. If your performance is getting worse, it might be cause for termination.
You can be honest
There is a silver lining to employers advising employees using drugs. Honesty truly is the best policy and in many cases there are programs in place to help employees who come asking for help before it presents itself. Many drug free workplaces have Employee Assistance Programs and it can help keep a job through substance abuse treatment, but there is a catch. The employee has to want to stop and it has to be sincere. Honesty doesn’t necessarily mean volunteering information to everyone as the purpose is to discreetly assist employees. There are legal incentives for companies to do so, which means staying quiet out of fear of retribution is unwise. If there is a drug testing program in place, a person looking for information need only check with the designated supervisors for access to information—and it can still be anonymous.
It doesn’t matter if using a particular drug is legal or not. Employers have the right to insist on keeping a business drug free. There are certainly limits to what can be done about drug use in a workplace, but drug users should try to understand that making it drug free is not about preventing individual liberties, but preserving company health and safety.
