Substance Abuse in the Work Place Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Substance Abuse in the Work Place - Essay Example The first step is problem identification. Drug and alcohol abuse are the nation's number one health problem and the biggest detriment to productivity levels. Substance abuse is detrimental to both the employer and the employee. The cost of employees' substance abuse to business has been well documented. Drug and alcohol abuse is costing American business $39.1 billion annually in lost productivity; the human economic cost may well exceed $100 billion a year. The employer pays with lowered productivity, increased health care costs, increased accidents and absenteeism, and in many instances eventual loss of a valuable employee. The employee pays with the loss of his or her health, increased financial and family problems, loss of respect, and often his or her job (Ammerman 1999). According to some reports, about one fifth of the workforce may be affected by personal problems of one kind or another. Whether caused by substance abuse difficult working conditions, or personal problems at home, the effects of these problems on productivity can be high, and the costs to the employer can be great. Further, some kinds of "disabilities" may be protected by law from arbitrary employer reaction. Employee assistance programs have become increasingly common means for confronting these problems in a constructive, legal manner. There are a variety of issues, though, to be addressed if supervisors are to be able to take effective advantage of intervention programs. Risk Factors associated with Substance Abuse at Workplace The main risk factors associated with substance abuse at the workplace are injuries and safety concerns. On the one hand, alcohol abuse increases the risk of cancer at several sites. Most notably, abuse is responsible for 75 percent of the deaths from cancer of the esophagus and 50 percent of those from cancer of the larynx and the lip/oral cavity/pharynx. It also contributes to cardiovascular, respiratory and digestive system diseases and to fatal mental disorders. Not all alcohol-related injury deaths involve alcohol abusers; simple misuse is sometimes the culprit. Reviewing accidental deaths in New Jersey, Haberman found that although 53 percent of traffic fatalities and 47 percent of nontraffic fatalities showed evidence of alcohol use, that is the decedent had a Blood Alcohol Count (BAC) of 0.01 percent or greater, autopsies revealed that only 34 percent of the accident victims with positive BACs were alcoholics. Another interesting finding was that 29 percent of the accidentall y killed alcoholics had BACs of 0.00 percent--that is, they had not been drinking prior to their death. Yet their accidental death rate far exceeded that of nonalcoholics. Their physical and psychological characteristics, such as hangovers, seizures, visual disturbances, impulsiveness, distractability and aggressiveness, possibly make alcoholics more accident-prone even when sober. Roughly 20 percent of all alcohol-related deaths result from motor vehicle accidents (Ammerman 1999). Alcohol is also implicated in intentional injury deaths. That it has been demonstrated to increase aggression and induce depression partly explains its involvement in 46 percent of the homicides and 28 percent of the suicides, totalling 9,107 and 8,552 respective deaths. A

Danger from Terrorism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Danger from Terrorism - Essay Example Invoking national security, the government is supposed to have taken advantage of 9/11 and the generally negative perception of terrorism to invest some righteousness and enlist popular support for its anti-terrorist war that often run roughshod over individual human rights and civil liberties. Richard Posner of the Atlantic Monthly affirms that officials tend to exaggerate the dangers to national security. When surprised and hurt, we tend to overreact. "The greater the threat that an activity poses to national safety, the stronger will the grounds seem for seeking to repress that activity, even at some cost to liberty Legality must sometimes be sacrificed for other values (p. 2)." American history itself is replete with examples of such overreaction to security threats. There was Lincoln who faced the threat of secession by suspending the writ of habeas corpus. This triggered the Civil War. Officials in the modern era have learned their lessons from the past when their counterparts in the old days ignored the storm clouds in the horizon and paid dearly for it. The Japanese early posturing, for example, was glossed over and led to the Pearl Harbor disaster that triggered World War II.When Soviet missiles were installed in Cuba, the US shrugged its shoulder and regretted it when theit later grappled with the Cuban missile crisis. As for terrorism as it is known today, Posner notes that 9/11 indeed showed the US as 'in much greater jeopardy from international terrorism than was previously believed." However, the government must exercise some discretion and sensitivity in running after terrorists. There have been a good number of men who were labeled "terrorists" by the western media when they engaged in a struggle to liberate their countries, among them Nelson Mandela and Menachem Begin. Later, the same media called them "statesmen" when they assumed leadership of their liberated nations. Thus, "one man's terrorist may be another man's freedom fighter (Posner, 2001, ch. 2). Process of Terror Wikipedia says "Terrorism" comes from the French word terrorisme which is based on the Latin verb terrere (to frighten). It was first used by French officials to describe themselves as members of the Jacobin Club which ruled post-Revolution under a "Reign of Terror (1793-94)." The terrorist acts consisted mainly of illegal arrest and execution of dissidents as a means of coercing compliance. Before this, terrorist acts under different labels were carried out by the 1st century Zealots against the Roman occupiers of eastern Mediterranean, by the Islamic sect Hash-Ishiim (which became the root word for "assassin") against people who opposed their beliefs, and by the IRA precursor Irish Republican Brotherhood against the British to demand independence. (p.1) Terrorism in the modern sense is commonly described as an "immoral, wanton and unjustified political violence characterized as indiscriminate, targeting civilians and executing them with disregard for human life (Wikipedia, p. 2). On the other hand, those accused of such acts call themselves by other names, among them, freedom fighter, separatist, liberator, revolutionary, vigilante, militant, paramilitary, guerrilla, rebel, and in the Muslim world, jihadi and mujaheddin (engaged in a holy war) or fedayeen (prepared for martyrdom). For