For Your Information

FTA Drug and Alcohol Regulation Updates
Issue 13, page 5

1998 Data Are Available

   FTA now has four years of quality data to document drug and alcohol testing results within the industry. Patterns and trends have evolved that validate the program and confirm what many already believed while at the same time contradicting many commonly held misconceptions.
   The highlights of the 1998 annual report are summarized here. The full report for 1998 and previous years can be obtained after January by contacting the FTA Office of Safety and Security at (202) 366-2896.
   In 1998, 151,237 specimens were collected for drug testing; in total, 1.67% were positive. The vast majority of tests (111,490) performed were random tests with a positive rate of 1.07 percent. The industry’s safety-sensitive contractors, when viewed as a whole, experienced a positive random rate (1.69%) for drugs that was nearly double the transit systems’ rate (0.94) highlighting the difference between systems that directly perform safety-sensitive functions and contract service providers.
   Small urban systems (50,000 to 200,000 service area population) had the highest average positive rate of 1.19 percent for drugs followed by rural systems (<50,000 population) with a rate of 1.12 percent and large urban systems (>200,000 population) with a rate of 1.06 percent. These statistics are in direct contrast to the commonly held perception that drug use is only a large urban problem.

   The other testing categories had higher positive results than random. The pre-employment positive rate was 2.74% for drugs. The post-accident positive rate was 1.45% for drugs and the reasonable suspicion positive rate for drugs was 8.04%. The midwest (FTA Region V) and mountain (FTA Region VIII) states had the highest positive random drug test results, whereas, New York (Region II), northwest (Region X), and the remainder of the east coast (Regions I and III) had the lowest rates.
   The alcohol test results indicate much lower positive rates. Of the 41,206 total alcohol screening tests, 0.29% were confirmed positive at the 0.04 or greater BAC level. The random positive rate was 0.13%, while post-accident and reasonable suspicion rates were 0.12% and 9.52%, respectively. The rates were nearly equal between directly operated (0.13%) and contracted (0.14%) services. However, there was a significant difference associated with service area size. The large urban systems had a 0.15 % positive random alcohol test rate whereas, the small urban and rural systems experienced positive random rates of 0.03% and 0.02%, respectively. Geographically, the northeast (Regions II and III) had the highest positive random alcohol rates (0.20% and 0.23%) while the west coast (Regions IX and X) and central states (Regions VI and VII) had the lowest (<0.05%).

July 16, 1996
Federal Register Vol.61
Pages 37015-37017
Primary Topic: Use of Labs Outside the U.S.

July 17, 1996
Federal Register Vol.61
Pages 37222-37224
Primary Topic: Expansion of SAP Definition

July 19, 1996
Federal Register Vol.61
Pages 37693-37700
Primary Topic: Insufficient Specimen

November 25, 1998
Federal Register Vol. 63
Pages 65128-65129
Primary Topic: Opiate Threshold

The information presented on this page should be used to update Chapter 2 of the Implementation Guidelines.