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U.S. Department
of Transportation
Federal Transit
Administration
Office of Safety and Security

FTA Drug And Alcohol Regulation Updates

Fall 2005

Issue 30

Introduction....

     The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) published its revised rule on prohibited drug use and the prevention of alcohol misuse (49 CFR Part 655) on August 1, 2001. The FTA published the revised Implementation Guidelines for Drug and Alcohol Regulations in Mass Transit to provide a comprehensive overview of the regulations.
     Since the Guidelines were published, there have been numerous amendments, interpretations, and clarifications to the Drug and Alcohol testing procedures and program requirements.
     This publication is being provided to update the Guidelines and inform your transit system of these changes. This Update is the thirtieth in a series.
 


Inside....

 FTA Drug & Alcohol Program National Conference Announced

     FTA announced that the first Drug and Alcohol Program National Conference will be held on March 20-21, 2006 at the Hampton Inn Tropicana, in Las Vegas, NV. A block of rooms will be available for attendees. The Conference will bring together experts in the field to discuss issues related to the FTA Drug and Alcohol Testing regulations (49 CFR Part 655) and the DOT Procedures for Transportation Workplace Drug and Alcohol Testing Programs (49 CFR Part 40).
     The two-day conference will include introductory comments from Jerry Powers of the FTA Office of Safety and Security and Mark Snider from the Office of Drug and Alcohol Policy and Compliance (ODAPC). Breakout sessions will cover such topics as: How Random is Your Testing Program?; The Role of the MRO and SAP; Testing Thresholds; Collection Demonstrations; Contractor, Service Agent and State Oversight and many others. Some sessions will be targeted for seasoned program managers while others will target those new to the field.
     In addition to the breakout sessions, technical assistance tables will be available where you can have your policy reviewed, enter and review your MIS report on line, or obtain hard copy and electronic versions of resource materials. Participants will have numerous opportunities to get questions answered and to interact with policy makers, auditors and experts in the field.
     Attendance at the conference will be beneficial to transit agency drug and alcohol program managers, human resource managers, safety managers, union representatives, safety-sensitive contractors and service agents providing services to the transit industry. Conference cost is free. Registration information will be announced on the FTA Website, in mailings and in future editions of this newsletter.

2002 Annual Report Published

     The seventh annual report of FTA’s drug and alcohol testing program covering the 2002 reporting year is now available from FTA’s Website or through the National Technical Information Service (see resource list on back page). The report summarizes the data reported from a stratified random sample of rural, small urban, and large urban transit systems and reports the random drug and alcohol violation rates for calendar years 1996 - 2002. Statistics are presented for each of the testing categories, employer type, employer size, employee category, FTA region and substance type.
     In 2002, the official drug violation rate for random tests rose by 7% to 1.05% and the official alcohol violation rate rose by more than 20% to 0.22%. Marijuana was detected more often than all the other drugs combined for random and reasonable suspicion tests. Marijuana was detected most often in post-accident tests, and cocaine was a close second. Cocaine was detected more often than the others combined for pre-employment tests while marijuana was detected in fewer than twenty percent of the pre-employment tests.
     The random drug and alcohol violation rates were significantly higher for contractors than for transit agencies. Contractor employees had over two times as many drug positives and nearly four times as many positive alcohol test results. Small urban transit systems had nearly double the positive drug test results as the rural and large urban systems. Alcohol test results were similar for the different employer sizes. New England had the lowest drug violation rate (0.62%) while the Middle Atlantic states had the highest rate (1.32%). The lowest alcohol violation rate was in New York/New Jersey and the highest was in the central states of Iowa, Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska.

Internet Reporting a Success

     Over 85% of transit agencies reported the data for their 2004 Drug & Alcohol Management Information System (MIS) report via the internet. Use of the Internet improved the speed and accuracy of the data reporting process resulting in time and cost savings.

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