Putting them to the test: should lifeguards be subject to random drug testing?(Perspectives)(lifeguard for the city of San Diego)(Column)

While working as a beach lifeguard for the city of San Diego, I was directly involved in the arrest of a number of people for drunk driving. In one case, a police officer who assisted me concluded, after some fairly extensive field-testing, that the drunk driving suspect was not "over the limit." His sergeant, however, decided to administer a blood test. The arrestee turned out to be over the limit by 37 percent. So much for the field-testing.

An article in Aquatics International (April 2004) reported on survey responses from 6,430 lifeguards, of whom nearly 70 percent recalled reporting to work hung over at some time in their careers, with a lesser number having worked under the influence on one or more occasions. The percentage of lifeguards who worked in different environments, such as pools, waterparks and beaches, is unclear. For beach lifeguards alone, the results might well be different because they tend to he older, more extensively trained and assigned broader responsibilities. Absent a survey directed at them, it is impossible to know.

However, as San Diego's lifeguard chief, on rare occasions I received calls from supervisors worried that an employee might be impaired by drugs or alcohol. At one point we had a "for cause" system in place, wherein an employee could be forced to undergo a drug test if reasonable cause appeared to exist. But I don't believe any supervisor ever developed an adequate sense of certainty to invoke a "for cause" test. Except in the most egregious circumstances, it's just too hard to tell, and supervisors were understandably loath to be the bad guys, especially if they might well be wrong.

Then came random drug testing fur all ...