Drug Use Endangers Your Workers Comp
Brian O Sutter
Personal Injury
If you have a full time, salaried job that entitles you to health/dental benefits and added security like workers compensation, then you’re living out one of the great American dreams. You have a job with good prospects and employers that look out for you. It’s a great position to be in.However, just because workers compensation is in place, it doesn’t automatically follow that if you get injured, your company will be there to support you financially. Obviously, if you weren’t injured on the job, your company has no legal obligation to honor a workers compensation agreement, since you weren’t actually working.
But even if you were injured while you were working, there are certain circumstances that occur that may still bar you from getting compensation. This is especially true if, after an investigation, it is decided that you may actually be at least partly responsible for your own injury. The presence of drugs is one of these instances.
Impaired Activity
Some lines of work have mandatory drug testing on either a periodic, or random basis in order to ensure that employees are staying alert, focused and substance free during working hours. This is hardly an unfair or draconian measure on the part of employers, as substances like alcohol or marijuana can, if consumed in large amounts, have a severe effect on thinking, judgment and even reflexes, all of which can compromise the quality of work, depending on the nature of a job.
This means that if, for some reason, you have decided to indulge in some kind of substance, whether it is a bit too much alcohol, or consuming marijuana or some other drug, you’re already running a big risk with your company policy. If you get into an accident, and the injuries you sustain are serious, you may be whisked off for emergency medical treatment.
One of the things that may happen while you are being treated is that you will be tested for a variety of different illnesses and substances. If drugs are found to be in your system, this is going to be very bad for you and your chances of getting workers compensation.
Your Rights Versus Your Responsibilities
While it may initially seem unfair that a company is punishing you for what should be your choice on what substances you and don’t decide to use, drugs are another matter entirely. The negative effects of drugs on the ability to work and concentrate effectively are well documented. Most workplaces will have a corporate policy in place forbidding the use of drugs while on the job, so if you do use drugs regardless, this can mean only one of two things; you either deliberately ignored the rules against drug use, or, by some miracle, remained ignorant of this policy the entire time you were working with the company.
Either reason is not going to be a solid justification for you deciding to take drugs while on the job, endangering not just yourself, but the people around you. So while you feel that denying your workers compensation for drug use is trampling on your civil liberties, the flip side of this coin is that you are in violation of the rules you agreed to abide by when you accepted this job. You can try to fight it in court with a workers’ compensation attorney, but only the most extraordinary circumstances will likely be able to overcome amount of negative evidence that will be weighed against you in court.
In other words, if you value your workers’ compensation, but choose to do drugs or drink excessively while on the job, you do so at the risk of losing that compensation when you’ll really need it.