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When Employers Say Piss, Americans ask 'How much?'

How Drug Testing Trashed the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

November 8, 2025



Americans roll over and play dead when it comes to drug testing. Not that I can blame them, of course. Drug warriors have blackmailed them into compliance by denying them the right to work in America should they stand up for their Fourth Amendment rights. That said, however, I am disheartened by the lack of pushback against this flagrant violation of American freedoms. Drug testing gives employers the right to trample the Bill of Rights, and most Americans take this in stride.


Ad for Schedule 1 Laundry Detergent 'for those special moments', bottle on top left. In center, young proud father fixing tie on his preteen son, with the caption 'It's his very first drug test!'
Schedule 1 Laundry Detergent -- because it's not enough to pass your drug test anymore, you need to pass it with flying colors!




It's a good job that I am a senior citizen, because I would starve if I were starting out now. I would never urinate for an employer in order to satisfy his or her morbid curiosity about the plant medicines of which I might choose to partake. The only drug test with which I would comply would be one that was limited by law to flagging impairment only. I would literally rather be poor than to give up my right as an American citizen to my freedom from unreasonable search -- and nothing could be more unreasonable than a biochemical fishing expedition inside my very body, as undertaken by a private enterprise, no less!

I think everyone who urinates under such conditions should have the right to see a breakdown of the biochemistry of their employer's urine -- as well as that of the lab techs who are testing the applicant samples, in blithe ignorance of the fact that they are thereby trashing the most basic of American freedoms -- the right to privacy, not just in one's home, for God's sake, but inside one's very body! Drug testing of this kind screams out the words "Unreasonable Search" -- and our courts' failure to recognize this fact shows how far the right wing has taken over American government. These courts do not even seem to know what the word "principle" means.

These are the courts that say, in regard to peyote use, that we do not have a right to religious liberty if we are practicing a religion that was not practiced by our ancestors! See? These guys are just making it up as they go along. They simply use their creative writing skills to invent literally unheard-of "rationales" for ruling against drug use: the more arbitrary the better, because they thereby signal to Americans that the right-wing is in control and doing as it pleases. "Principles?" they cry. "We don't need no stinkin' principles"!


American flag propped up by beaker containing yellow urine. To the right, the words: America, where a man is judged not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his urine.
Drug testing is the extra-judicial enforcement of Christian Science sharia, designed to remove Christian Science heretics from the workforce.




Unfortunately, our thoroughly cowed population seems to agree, otherwise there would be organized pushback against drug testing.

Occasionally, I overhear a conversation that sounds hopeful. Some friends and family members are actually discussing drug testing. But then I realize that their concern is limited to their fear that the ingestion of poppy seeds, as for instance from crackers, might return a false positive for opiate use in some upcoming test. That is a merely selfish concern. Their real concern should be that they are being tested in the first place. (I want to tell them: "That's not YOUR problem! Sue the ---- if they deny you work because you eat crackers! They have no business making hiring decisions based on equivocal data like that!")

But let me do my best to see this from the Drug Warrior's point of view. Let's suppose then that safety does indeed make it necessary for private enterprise to trash our Fourth Amendment rights. Okay. Let's assume that the Founding Fathers really didn't mean it when it came to the Bill of Rights. Fine.

In that case, let us begin searching for alcohol in our tests, a drug which kills 178,000 Americans a year, far more than are killed by so-called "drugs." 1 If we find so much as a trace of liquor, let us deny the culprit the ability to work in America. Indeed, let's really crack down, because we need to be SAFE, don't we?! We owe this to our KIDS!! Let us confiscate mansions and estates whenever so much as a beer bottle is found on the premises -- and who cares where it came from! (Don't you hate these topers that hide behind technicalities! Well, no more!) Instead of throwing mothers out of public housing for using a drug that Freud considered to be a godsend for depression, let us start throwing CEOs out of boardrooms if they test positive for having consumed deadly alcohol -- now or at any time in the past, it does not matter when! We're doing this for our children, remember? Tough love, folks! Tough love! 2

But somehow I fear that our Drug Warriors are not quite THAT interested in safety. They are thinking of policies that would serve to rough up their political opposition, not policies whose consequences would hit home for them personally.

And so I conclude as follows:

Until acne-scarred lab techs start testing the urine of Drug Warriors for liquor consumption (that may have taken place at any time in the past, I don't care when), I'll keep my zipper up, thank you very much. And that goes for you Lowe's... and you, Amazon... and you, Costco, etc.

Someday a free people are going to rise up and shame such drug-testing companies for helping to trash the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

RELATED ESSAYS










Notes for essay entitled When Employers Say Piss, Americans ask 'How much?': How Drug Testing Trashed the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

1: CDC. 2024. “Facts About U.S. Deaths from Excessive Alcohol Use.” Alcohol Use. July 8, 2024. https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/facts-stats/?CDC_AAref_Val=https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/features/excessive-alcohol-deaths.html. (up)
2: Drug Warriors and Their Prey: From Police Power to Police State Miller, Richard Lawrence, Bloomsbury Academic, New York, 1996 (up)




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The "scheduling" system is completely anti-scientific and anti-patient. It tells us we can make a one-size-fits-all decision about psychoactive substances without regard for dosage, context of use, reason for use, etc. That's superstitious tyranny.

The most addictive drugs have a bunch of great uses, like treating pain and inspiring great literature. Prohibition causes addiction by making their use as problematic as possible and denying knowledge and choices. It's always wrong to blame drugs.

That's so "drug war" of Rick: If a psychoactive substance has a bad use at some dose, for somebody, then it must not be used at any dose by anybody. It's hard to imagine a less scientific proposition, or one more likely to lead to unnecessary suffering.

The book "Plants of the Gods" is full of plants and fungi that could help addicts and alcoholics, sometimes in the plant's existing form, sometimes in combinations, sometimes via extracting alkaloids, etc. But drug warriors need addiction to sell their prohibition ideology.

Now drug warriors have nitrous oxide in their sights, the substance that inspired the philosophy of William James. They're using the same tired MO: focusing exclusively on potential downsides and never mentioning the benefits of use, and/or denying that any exist.

There will always be people who don't use drugs wisely, just as there are car drivers who don't drive wisely, and rock climbers who fall to their death. America needs to grow up and accept this, while ending prohibition and teaching safe use.

Drug Prohibition is a crime against humanity. It outlaws our right to take care of our own health.

People magazine should be fighting for justice on behalf of the thousands of American young people who are dying on the streets because of the drug war.

Democratic societies need to outlaw prohibition for many reasons, the first being the fact that prohibition removes millions of minorities from the voting rolls, thereby handing elections to fascists and insurrectionists.

We have to deny the FDA the right to judge psychoactive medicines in the first place. Their materialist outlook obliges them to ignore all obvious benefits. When they nix drugs like MDMA, they nix compassion and love.


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