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DOT to publish final rule on drug and alcohol testing

The Department of Transportation today gave notice of a Final Rule for transportation workplace drug and alcohol testing programs which includes testing for the drug Ecstasy, lowering cut-off levels for cocaine and amphetamines and conducting mandatory initial testing for heroin.

The Federal Register posting will be published this coming Monday, Aug. 16, for the Final Rule, which goes into effect Oct. 1.

DOT notes that it is required by the Omnibus Transportation Employees Testing Act (Omnibus Act) to follow the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) requirements for the testing procedures and protocols.

In addition to the testing protocols for the above-mentioned drugs, DOT brought several of its testing definitions in line with those of HHS.

The Final Rule also covers qualifications and testing for medical review officers.

Each medical review officer or MRO will need to be re-qualified — including passing an examination given by an MRO training organization — every five years.  The Final Rule eliminated the requirement for each MRO to take 12 hours of continuing education every three years.

An MRO will not need to be trained by an HHS-approved MRO training organization as long as the MRO meets DOT’s qualification and re-qualification training requirements.

The Final Rule does not allow the use of Health and Human Services-certified Instrumented Initial Testing Facilities (IITFs) to conduct initial drug testing because the Omnibus Act requires laboratories to be able to perform both initial and confirmation testing but IITFs cannot conduct confirmation testing.

The Omnibus Transportation Employee Testing Act of 1991 requires drug and alcohol testing of safety-sensitive transportation employees in aviation, trucking, railroads, mass transit, pipelines, and other transportation industries. DOT publishes rules on who must conduct drug and alcohol tests, how to conduct those tests, and what procedures to use when testing. These regulations cover all transportation employers, safety-sensitive transportation employees, and service agents — roughly 10 million people. Encompassed in 49 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 40, the Office of Drug & Alcohol Policy & Compliance (ODAPC) publishes, implements, and provides authoritative interpretations of these rules.

The document can be viewed at the Federal Register’s Public Inspection website:  http://www.ofr.gov/OFRUpload/OFRData/2010-20095_PI.pdf   (This link is only good for today, August 13. )

After today DOT expects to have the link on its website Monday at www.dot.gov/ost/dapc .

The Trucker staff may be contacted to comment at [email protected] .

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