Executive Order 12564, signed on September 15, 1986 by U.S. President Ronald Reagan, was an executive order intended to prevent federal employees from using illegal drugs and require that government agencies initiate drug testing on their employees.
In September 1986, after determining that drug use was having serious adverse effects upon a significant portion of the national workforce and was resulting in billions of dollars of lost productivity each year, President Reagan issued Executive Order 12564. The order required all federal employees to refrain from using illegal drugs and authorized drug testing under certain circumstances to identify illegal drug users.
Executive Order 12564 requires the head of each executive branch agency to develop a plan for achieving a drug-free workplace. The plans were to include provisions for identifying illegal drug users through drug testing.
Although the executive order has been described as having "little significance for private employers", it has also been termed the beginning of the drug testing movement in the United States, that "set in place many of the features of workplace drug testing that have now become standard for public and regulated private employers", including the Drug-Free Workplace Act about two years later.
See also
References
- Dasgupta, Amitava (2010). A Health Educator's Guide to Understanding Drugs of Abuse Testing. Jones & Bartlett Learning. p. 46. ISBN 978-0763765897.
- "Drug Testing > Federal Law". USLegal. Retrieved March 21, 2024.
- National Research Council (US) and Institute of Medicine (US) Committee on Drug Use in the Workplace (1994). "The Legal Environment of Drug Testing". In Normand, J; Lempert, RO; O'Brien, CP (eds.). Under the Influence? Drugs and the American Work Force. National Academies Press. (via National Library of Medicine)
External links
This article incorporates public domain material from Employee Drug Testing. A Single Agency is Needed to Manage Federal Employee Drug Testing (PDF). Congressional Research Service.