Nearly one million UK employees have illegal drugs in their system at any given point in time, with the number testing positive having jumped by a huge 43% over the last five years.
According to a report entitled ‘High Society: Drug Prevalence in the UK workplace’, which is based on the results of drug tests among more than 1.6 million workers between 2007 and 2011, some 3.23% came out positive last year compared with 2.26% five years ago.
As there are 29.23 million people currently in work according to the Office for National Statistics, if the figures were extrapolated out across the UK population as a whole, it means that some 940,000 staff – or about one in 30 – are likely to have drugs in their system at any single point in time.
Dr Claire George, laboratory director at Concanteno, a drug and alcohol screening provider that undertook the research, said: “The positivity rate of 3.23% reported in this study demonstrates that drug use in the workplace is an issue that employers should be aware of. These are conservative figures across the workplace when you consider how many companies do not have a screening programme in place.”
The most popular drugs in use are cannabis, opiates excluding heroin and cocaine. Workers aged 25 to 34, who have relatively high levels of disposable income, are the most likely to test positive for Class A drugs such as cocaine and amphetamines.
