Don Rothschild created a business in the early 1990’s to aid organizations and companies with installing drug free workplaces.

Q: What is the intersection between drug use and performance in the work place?

Think about this, to be able to acquire drugs or alcohol, it takes what? Money. People get money from where? Where they work. People who use drugs and get money from where they work present a problem to the employer. So, that’s the sector I work in basically.

I got into the field I’m working in sort of by evolution. I drank myself out of the oil business a little over 20 years ago. I was in the oil business. I was the international exploration manager for the local oil company. Well, that got me out of the business, and when I got in recovery I was like 56 years old. I earned a lousy reputation from my previous employer so I had to start all over. I went back to college and got a degree in human services because I wanted to do something that would have helped my employer. My employer liked me. He wanted to see me not be a detriment or a liability to the workplace, but he did not know how to handle people in recovery and in effect, it became an enabler for my disease. When I got out of recovery, I wanted to do something.

I learned a lot about the EAP- employee assistance program. All large organizations, the government defines it as an organization that employs over 50 people, almost all of them have EAP’s which work as an interface between employers and employees to help them solve problems that detract from their work. Imagine an alcoholic or an addict at work.

It is estimated it costs business about $28 billion a year in production losses- drugs and alcohol. Two-thirds of it alcohol absenteeism. When I say drug addiction I mean alcohol and drug addiction. Alcohol is a drug. Except it is a legal drug, that is the only difference.

I wanted to do something to help businesses because I had been in business all of my life. I am not a therapist or a clinician. I am a businessman, I like to see businesses succeed.

I believe working with businesses and helping employees solving their problems on the job. EAP’s are not exclusive to things other than drugs. EAP’s can help with problems related to gambling, money, adolescent children, all of these problems, EAP’s work with.

The EAP is within the organization whether it’s Lockheed Martin or the State of Colorado. It can also be contracted out, but usually comes under the purview of human resources.

Q: What does productivity loss really mean?

What they could have made had the employee been on the job when they were supposed to. If they had been absent just two days a year instead of 22, or if they make errors on the job, there are liability issues .If an employee has an accident on the job, think what it costs the employer. Same thing with errors and mistakes on the job. A person under the influence may not be working to his full efficiency. That’s where those numbers come from.

Q: What did you mean earlier when you said your employer was an enabler.

Oh, that’s a term that clinicians use if a person has a problem with substance abuse, drugs or alcohol and say, he didn’t hold my feet to the fire at the job. For example, if a man and a woman are married and the husband is drinking and drugging and can’t perform his jobs at the house that he normally does, like mow the yard, do repairs, and pay bills, the wife will assume those jobs and thus become an enabler. In the workplace, if an employee, like I was, is not working at full capacity, the employer might make excuses for him rather than say, “You need to do this or you’re through.” That’s what an enabler does, makes it easier for the user to continue using.

Q: Now, do you have any facts related to Colorado in particular?

Well, let me continue about my evolution. I went to treatment, went back to college and worked in the field of treatment for two years and then to work with EAP’s. About that time, 1989, the Department of Transportation and the federal government passes their drug free workplace act of 1988. Then the DoT passed one in 1989 which demanded that federal departments and contractors to federal departments have a drug free workplace. The Dot went further and stated that people involved in interstate commerce that transported people or materials across state lines had to be drug free. They implemented a drug free workplace that included random testing of people like truckers, airline pilots, locomotive engineers, transit operators- train/bus operators, pipelines and the coast guard. That put about 15 million people in a drug free mandated workplace.

The organizations usually dumped it upon somebody in the office. Talking about highway, it can include owner/operators. So the man who owns an 18-wheeler can be included, small companies or big companies. I saw that and as an entrepreneur I thought, “These people don’t know anything about drug and alcohol testing…” I was working for a clinic at the time and got my partner there who was an entrepreneur also, we formed a consortium of small businesses and contracted to do all that work for them. We founded the company back in 1994. We do drug testing, train supervisors, educate employees, and evaluate people who test positive. We turned lemons into lemonade. We took a government mandate that was a real burden on companies and found a way to make money off of it. But I learned a lot about the value of a drug free workplace.

Going back to what I was saying, drugs work in this country on a very capitalistic basis. Money drives the drug business here. Money comes from employers, so if we work on a drug free workplace, we may solve some of the problems of the drug war.

I stayed with that consortium and we did real well. We worked with about 200 companies, including the Denver Metro Transportation System. We testes all of their 2,000 drivers and handled that. In 1998, I got tired of collecting pee in the middle of the night so I turned it all over to my partner and now I just work on workplace implementation. So I don’t do testing. I just do all the other stuff now.

Q: What exactly do you do with the employers? What is the approach toward workers with substance abuse problems?

Most of my work is done with people under DoT regulations. As much as I am an old fart, I’m 75 years old, I do this just 10 or 20 hours a week. Essentially, I work for several companies. I do supervisor training, employee education if necessary and right now I am reviewing one company’s drug free workplace document.

Most of my income comes from evaluations. If an individual under the program- a driver, a pilot- tests positive for drugs or alcohol on the job, they are required by federal law to see a substance abuse professional. That’s me, an SAP. You have to be nationally certified as a physician, a certified EAP, drug and alcohol counselor, a licensed clinician/therapist, or a licensed social worker. I am a licensed, certified EAP. I see an individual and evaluate that determines if they have a dependency disorder, if they are an addict or if they just did something stupid. Then I do a referral to either educational or therapeutic programs. The law says that if an employee tests positive, they have to be relieved from that safety sensitive job, a pilot can’t drive, a coast guard captain can’t lead a ship. They have to do whatever the SAP requires and then be re-evaluated. Then they may, they may, be returned to safety sensitive work. It’s up to the employer to make the decision regarding discipline. The drug free workplace act does not discuss discipline, it only says that individual can’t drive until they do what the SAP says. So I can refer them back to the company if they are not a safety risk. They have to be tested on a more frequent basis.

Some of the organizations just flat fire people. Most organizations have a second chance policy. When an employee comes back to work, they sign a statement saying if they ever test positive they may lose their job.

Q: While someone is going through these motions, it seems like this could take days to months?

The federal mandate states that if they are in therapy and if they’ve done sufficient therapy then the counselor in therapy states they are compliant, I can place them back again. Most of the therapy is after hours, in the evening. I can usually get them back to work within two weeks. So if they test positive they can bet for sure they will be out at least a week.

Q: While out of work, do they receive their paycheck regularly? Does health insurance cover the costs?

That goes under their employment contract. Every organization is different. Some of them put people on sick leave. Some of them say you screwed up, you’re busted, you’ve screwed up, come back when you’re done. It’s a lot cheaper to be out of work for two weeks even than to get a DUI.

I volunteer at the high school to talk to students who get busted. The cost of a simple DUI in the state of Colorado, the minimum cost to an individual is probably $2,000. The very first thing, somebody tows your car away while you go to jail for one night. You are paying car storage, you have to put up money for bail. The lawyer costs over $1,000. You will be fined several hundred dollars. It could be close to $10,000 before you’re through.

If an individual gets busted for drugs and alcohol, he may be out of work, but it still costs him less than a DUI.

Q: How common a problem is this?

It’s not very common. If we are talking specifically about DoT regulations, I can’t site you exact figures except for one organization where we tested 2,000 drivers. We got positives in the rate of a little bit less than one percent. So this program is very effective. It does keep drivers safe. The object is to keep your highway safe. Most of the people I see get busted for marijuana because marijuana stays in your system longer. One hit of marijuana can stay in your system and test positive a week later.

Q: If someone does use marijuana and two weeks later they get tested and test positive, what would the response be? What if it is just a recreational incident?

That’s what they pay me the big bucks for. If it appears to be a recreational thing, I send them to an educational workshop. I have to send them somewhere. Usually they get into a 12 hour session within 10 days or so. It’s a standard 12 hour class. There are about 150 clinics in Denver that do it. They do it on a weekend. They do it one night for four hours and Saturday for eight hours.

Q: How does all of your work here fit into the greater drug war?

I feel like it doesn’t do a lot. There’s more that really needs to be done. Cloverdale was a congressman who got grant funds to educate businessmen on the value of a drug free workplace. I am a board member of the Colorado Drug Free Workplace Alliance. We have tried to educate businesses. We’ve had conferences.

As far as the War on Drugs, I consider that something having to do with law enforcement, trying to get drugs off the streets. I am not even interested in drugs on the street, I am interested in keeping them out of the workplace. If we can keep people employed drug free, then we have taken a real big hit out of the War on Drugs.

There are some businesses that are worse than others. I work with people who dig foundations. I only work with people driving vehicles weighing over 26,000 pounds, so I get a lot of cement drivers and pumpers. They are other trades and professions that are notorious for having people who are users. Those are businesses that people who like to use drugs can get into and make good money and support their habit. They can’t get into over the road trucking, the railroad, airplane mechanics.

There are some work organizations that are relatively drug free and there are others where there are lots of drugs.

We have a hard time selling employers on a drug free workplace because it costs money to put in a drug free workplace.

Q: So you are trying to convince them to pay for testing their employees?

I don’t advocate blanket testing for employees. I advocate the drug free workplace which requires that you train supervisors to be able to recognize drug-affected behavior. If they are affected, have them tested. If tested, you have to offer some recourse, some program, or therapy to be able to get back in the workforce. To do all of this- to write the policy costs money, to train someone to manage the program, to educate and disseminate information to the employees, to train the supervisors, and then to implement a testing system as necessary… It costs money. Fifty dollars an employee may not be that much money, but a business owner won’t spend that money unless they see a return on their investment. If an employer can’t see a return, then they don’t want to do it. That’s why most small companies don’t have a drug free workplace.

Q: What is the return?

Probably six or eight to one. Provided, if an employer only has a 10 employees- one in ten American employees is affected by drugs or alcohol. That is a good figure, it has been around for a long time. So, if an employer has 20 employees, the odds are good that two of them may have a problem. He would profit. If the employer has five employees, the odds are fifty-fifty he may have somebody. So he might pay $250 a year and nothing gets better.

Employers save on workers comp insurance, absenteeism, claims, medical insurance claims and those are the ways that he saves the money that he spends. That’s how the money is returned. He gets full time, dedicated employees.

Q: After your own experience having a problem with alcohol, going through treatment, working in the treatment field, and now in this field, how have your views changed?

Oh, I won’t hire anybody with a problem. The oil business was a wheeling-dealing thing. Three martini lunches. There was a lot of partying going on. However, in one of the companies I worked for, I think the president of the company had a problem with alcohol, so I fit in real well.

My view is that it is a costly problem to the economy and to businesses and organizations.

“Until I changed everything I was doing I would go back to those old behaviors.”

Q: If someone has a problem interfering with their ability to work, are they a bad person? Are they making a mistake?

I consider addiction as a disease. I am fully supportive of the disease concept. I work with or know hundreds and hundreds of recovering people who by and far make more dedicated, more productive employees than the people they are working for. I also work with Advocates for Recovery and we do just that, we advocate for people in recovery and encourage employers to recognize these are valuable employees.

We have a mix of everything. We have people who aren’t addicts. We have recovering people. We have people who just appreciate the value of the recovering individual. It’s interesting, different organizations take different views of it. Some organizations will terminate an employee if they test positive without a second chance. An interesting one, and it’s been upheld in the Supreme Court they could do this, is Exxon. Remember the Exxon Valdez case? The captain had been drinking and it cost Exxon quite a bit of money. Well, if an Exxon employee tests positive, he can come back to work, but not in a safety sensitive job. Statistics will prove that just because an addict quits doesn’t mean they will stay quit. The odds are they will use again. The odds are up in the 80-90% range that they will use again, even if they go to treatment.

But, there are some that go to treatment, use again, go to treatment again and eventually they get it. I was one of those. It took me 10 years of struggling with my disease before I got rid of it.

Q: Was it gradual for you or was there something that helped you finally turn the corner?

It was a eureka moment. All of a sudden I realized that everything I had done before in my life I had to change. I remember the moment. It was in 1986. It was just, all of a sudden it came to me that I was destroying my life and that as long as I kept doing what I was doing I was destroying my life. Until I changed everything I was doing I would go back to those old behaviors. So I took a clean slate and started all over again.

Q: Is there anything else you would like to mention?

Ohh, there’s everything else to talk about. The reason I am on the Drug Strategy Task Force is that when they started out they were addressing law enforcement, War on Drugs, and a lot of treatment, but they weren’t getting at the real source of prevention and where the prevention comes from. To me, the whole basis of the American way of life begins in the workplace. Everybody works. As long as we have people using in the workplace we have a problem. I am very comfortable where I am, doing what I am doing and I hope I am doing some good.