When US companies drug test, they wind up hiring more black people [View all]

[IronLionZion]

http://qz.com/210345/when-us-companies-drug-test-they-wind-up-hiring-more-black-people/


Today, almost half of all US jobs require a drug test, and it turns out that companies that test their employees hire more black people. But that’s not a result that reflects well on Americans.
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Abigail Wozniak, a Notre Dame labor economist, has developed a model to show how the rise of employee drug testing in the United States has affected different populations. What she found surprised her: In states where testing is prevalent thanks to supportive laws, black employment increased between 7% and 30%, and wages for black workers increased by between 1.4% and 13%.
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That’s surprising because in America’s often-misguided war on drugs, black people tend to suffer disproportionately—just look at the statistics on arrests and the controversy over “stop and frisk” policing tactics. There’s plenty of evidence that black and white Americans use illicit drugs at roughly the same rate, though white Americans are more likely than black Americans to abuse alcohol:

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But despite that, according to studies cited in the paper, there’s wide overestimation of black people’s drug use in the US by everyone from police to hiring managers to young black people themselves.

Cold hard indisputable truth can be an equalizing force in society.