Various questions have been raised by Peter's question:
1. How will legalisation affect testing regime?
2. What detects impairment?
3. How effective will the new AS/NZS 4760:2019 be in managing risks around impairment
Simply legalising cannabis does not mean one can turn up for work in an unfit condition. Just as Peter said that alcohol is a legal drug which can cause a lot more harm than cannabis. As per CDC, the third leading preventable cause of death is alcohol in America.
Urine does not detect the psychoactive element and hence has no correlation to impairment. Police detect alcohol use through a breathalyser to see if the drug is still in our blood which can cause impairment. So does urine screen has any place in workplace safety regime when it can only detect historical use. Due to its lipophilic nature (lipo=fat, phyllic-loving) THC gets stuck to fat cells and is notorious for having the longest elimination time. ((Sharma et al., 2012))
On the other hand, if you use a saliva tool with great sensitivity, specificity and accuracy there are greater chances to detect the recent use during which one can be affected by the psychoactive nature of the drug. Hence, saliva can correlate to impairment but does not detect impairment.
Moreover, in Ilinois where medical cannabis is already legal, there has been an increase in stakes for trying to fake a pre-employment drug test. As per their law attempting to fake or tamper with their sample during a pre-employment drug screen is a felony in the state of IL. About a decade and a half ago, this wasn’t the case.
We need to build a culture of respect in an organisation and having a saliva regime will prevent cheating and getting a false sense of safety from drug abuse. When workers know that they will not be penalised for their historical use, AOD policy implementation will be a lot more effective.
AS/NZS 4760:2019- Procedure for specimen collection and the detection and quantification of drugs in oral fluid is now available from:
https://infostore.saiglobal.com/en-au/Search/All/?searchTerm=AS/%20NZS%204760:2019
Changing the matrix from saliva to urine is not as ideal as they both detect different elements. NZ didn't have saliva confirmatory process, although ESR started this in 2013 but there was not a huge uptake on this. Urine advocates always used the pretext "we dont have a standard" but now we do.
Yes, there are steps been taking by CHL to get the confirmation process set up for saliva which shouldn't take long.
Products for saliva screen will also take some time to be verified against the cut off as per the new Standard but there are some good tools out there already with the verification to old standards and using your due diligence you can compare them to the current requirement.
Training in oral fluid is also required, the collection and screening of results and despatch to a laboratory which also should not take long.
Standard is a minimum bar and having a standard has at least shown what sort of tools should be used. There are organisations who do saliva testing with tools that will never detect THC. It is a wake- up call and one should invest in the right tools that actually work towards workplace safety. When urine standard came out in 2008, there weren't any tools or training available at the start but were soon created. To use saliva as a first line of defence can still be a valid matrix in drug detection for recent use even though all the processes are not completely there. When changing the matrix to urine confirmation there should be some time built in between the oral fluid and urine to allow the drugs to be metabolised. Thank you Sam Houliston to point to Hayllar vs Good time food case and recent Port Kembla coal mine case by Fair works commission has argued the pros and cons of saliva and urine very vividly.
Feel free to contact me in relation to the new Standards.