5 drug positivity take-aways from our Industry Insights webinar

Today’s headlines are filled with stories about marijuana, the opioid crisis, and the consequences of continued substance use. Many employers are left wondering how drug use can impact their employees and how their specific industry sectors may be affected. Quest Diagnostics published a detailed report about drug positivity by industry. The data provides valuable insights from more than 14 million general U.S. workforce urine drug tests regarding positivity rates in 17 unique industry sectors.  

In our recent webinar, R. H. Barry Sample, PhD, senior director of science and technology at Quest Diagnostics, and Ashlyn Hazard, data analytics manager, took a deep dive into the latest data from this comprehensive report.

Here are some of the key findings:

1. One third of U.S. industry sectors experienced year-over-year double-digit increases in overall drug positivity between 2015 and 2018.
   Among these industries are:
   • Transportation and Warehousing
   • Other Services (except Public Administration)
   • Wholesale Trade
   • Retail Trade
   • Construction
   • Administrative Support, Waste Management, and Remediation Services
     
2. The Retail Trade industry experienced the highest overall positivity rate across all four years of the analysis and exceeded the national positivity for three of the four years.
   
3. Marijuana positivity increased by double-digits in eight of the 17 industry sectors between 2015 and 2018. Six of these sectors saw increases that were more than double the increase of the national marijuana positivity rate for the same time period.
   
4. The construction sector had the highest positivity rate each year between 2015 and 2018 for both cocaine and methamphetamine.
   
5. The Accommodation and Food Services sector consistently had the highest marijuana positivity rate for each of the four years analyzed.
   

This presentation of insights into positivity by industry-sector and what it means for your business is available on-demand.

Additionally, we released a companion brochure detailing these findings. Download our Industry Insights Quest Diagnostics Drug Testing Index brochure.

To learn more about drug testing, visit our website.