Here is free advice worth heeding. Go beyond the DOT requirement for drug educaiton and discuss enabling. You will be surprised, how, when it occurs, and what industries are most effected by alcohol and drug problems. Enabling in the workplace is a serious problem. With reasonable suspicion training, you must make DOT supervisors aware of how enabling takes place so they do not fall prey to its many routes of manifestation. Enabling happens in the following ways and will be seen in the following types of industries where high value is placed on social activity with frequent use of alcohol, alcohol use at lunch, etc. (i.e.,lawyers are more likely to drink at lunch than school teachers. High male demographic work groups with strong social ties consume more alcohol.) You will therefore see more alcohol in these professions. It has nothing to do with the profession, but the exposure to beverage ethanol consumption. Official rest breaks that allow for alcohol use are found in beer breweries. They therefore have more alcoholism. Industries characterized by frequent opportunity to use alcohol (or drugs.) For example, organizations with higher rates of business travel, sales travel, evening work shifts with after-hours socializing with alcohol; isolated employees without direct supervision (i.e., non-office-like environments); exposure to served alcoholic beverages (airlines, hotel, restaurants); accessibility to addictive drugs - pharmaceutical, medical, and nursing occupations. Self-employed persons. (Frequent opportunity to tax susceptibility exists when self-employed, and many alcoholics will become self-employed as a result of alcoholic drinking at work.) Finally, if an alcohol/drug policy lacks effectiveness or fear exists that a zero tolerance policy will not permit treatment, then risk to the organization will increase and enabling will ensue.
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