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When Employers Say Piss, Americans ask 'How much?'

How Drug Testing Trashed the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

November 8, 2025



Americans roll over and play dead when it comes to drug testing. Not that I can blame them, of course. Drug warriors have blackmailed them into compliance by denying them the right to work in America should they stand up for their Fourth Amendment rights. That said, however, I am disheartened by the lack of pushback against this flagrant violation of American freedoms. Drug testing gives employers the right to trample the Bill of Rights, and most Americans take this in stride.


Ad for Schedule 1 Laundry Detergent 'for those special moments', bottle on top left. In center, young proud father fixing tie on his preteen son, with the caption 'It's his very first drug test!'
Schedule 1 Laundry Detergent -- because it's not enough to pass your drug test anymore, you need to pass it with flying colors!




It's a good job that I am a senior citizen, because I would starve if I were starting out now. I would never urinate for an employer in order to satisfy his or her morbid curiosity about the plant medicines of which I might choose to partake. The only drug test with which I would comply would be one that was limited by law to flagging impairment only. I would literally rather be poor than to give up my right as an American citizen to my freedom from unreasonable search -- and nothing could be more unreasonable than a biochemical fishing expedition inside my very body, as undertaken by a private enterprise, no less!

I think everyone who urinates under such conditions should have the right to see a breakdown of the biochemistry of their employer's urine -- as well as that of the lab techs who are testing the applicant samples, in blithe ignorance of the fact that they are thereby trashing the most basic of American freedoms -- the right to privacy, not just in one's home, for God's sake, but inside one's very body! Drug testing of this kind screams out the words "Unreasonable Search" -- and our courts' failure to recognize this fact shows how far the right wing has taken over American government. These courts do not even seem to know what the word "principle" means.

These are the courts that say, in regard to peyote use, that we do not have a right to religious liberty if we are practicing a religion that was not practiced by our ancestors! See? These guys are just making it up as they go along. They simply use their creative writing skills to invent literally unheard-of "rationales" for ruling against drug use: the more arbitrary the better, because they thereby signal to Americans that the right-wing is in control and doing as it pleases. "Principles?" they cry. "We don't need no stinkin' principles"!


American flag propped up by beaker containing yellow urine. To the right, the words: America, where a man is judged not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his urine.
Drug testing is the extra-judicial enforcement of Christian Science sharia, designed to remove Christian Science heretics from the workforce.




Unfortunately, our thoroughly cowed population seems to agree, otherwise there would be organized pushback against drug testing.

Occasionally, I overhear a conversation that sounds hopeful. Some friends and family members are actually discussing drug testing. But then I realize that their concern is limited to their fear that the ingestion of poppy seeds, as for instance from crackers, might return a false positive for opiate use in some upcoming test. That is a merely selfish concern. Their real concern should be that they are being tested in the first place. (I want to tell them: "That's not YOUR problem! Sue the ---- if they deny you work because you eat crackers! They have no business making hiring decisions based on equivocal data like that!")

But let me do my best to see this from the Drug Warrior's point of view. Let's suppose then that safety does indeed make it necessary for private enterprise to trash our Fourth Amendment rights. Okay. Let's assume that the Founding Fathers really didn't mean it when it came to the Bill of Rights. Fine.

In that case, let us begin searching for alcohol in our tests, a drug which kills 178,000 Americans a year, far more than are killed by so-called "drugs." 1 If we find so much as a trace of liquor, let us deny the culprit the ability to work in America. Indeed, let's really crack down, because we need to be SAFE, don't we?! We owe this to our KIDS!! Let us confiscate mansions and estates whenever so much as a beer bottle is found on the premises -- and who cares where it came from! (Don't you hate these topers that hide behind technicalities! Well, no more!) Instead of throwing mothers out of public housing for using a drug that Freud considered to be a godsend for depression, let us start throwing CEOs out of boardrooms if they test positive for having consumed deadly alcohol -- now or at any time in the past, it does not matter when! We're doing this for our children, remember? Tough love, folks! Tough love! 2

But somehow I fear that our Drug Warriors are not quite THAT interested in safety. They are thinking of policies that would serve to rough up their political opposition, not policies whose consequences would hit home for them personally.

And so I conclude as follows:

Until acne-scarred lab techs start testing the urine of Drug Warriors for liquor consumption (that may have taken place at any time in the past, I don't care when), I'll keep my zipper up, thank you very much. And that goes for you Lowe's... and you, Amazon... and you, Costco, etc.

Someday a free people are going to rise up and shame such drug-testing companies for helping to trash the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

RELATED ESSAYS










Notes for essay entitled When Employers Say Piss, Americans ask 'How much?': How Drug Testing Trashed the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

1: CDC. 2024. “Facts About U.S. Deaths from Excessive Alcohol Use.” Alcohol Use. July 8, 2024. https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/facts-stats/?CDC_AAref_Val=https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/features/excessive-alcohol-deaths.html. (up)
2: Drug Warriors and Their Prey: From Police Power to Police State Miller, Richard Lawrence, Bloomsbury Academic, New York, 1996 (up)




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Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




All drugs have potential positive uses for somebody, at some dose, in some circumstance, alone or in combination. To decide in advance that a drug is completely useless is an offense to reason and to human liberty.

In response to a tweet that "some drugs cannot be used wisely for recreational purposes": The problem is, most people draw such conclusions based on general impressions inspired by a media that demonizes drugs. In reality, it's hard to imagine a drug that cannot theoretically be used wisely for recreation at some dose, in some context.

The Petpedia website says that "German Shepherds need to have challenging jobs such as searching for drugs." How about searching for prohibitionists instead?

William James claimed that his constitution prevented him from having mystical experiences. The fact is that no one is prevented from having mystical experiences provided that they are willing to use psychoactive substances wisely to attain that end.

The FDA uses reductive materialism to justify and normalize the views of Cortes and Pizarro with respect to entheogenic medicine.

It's already risky to engage in free and honest speech about drugs online: Colorado politicians tried to make it absolutely illegal in February 2024. The DRUG WAR IS ALL ABOUT DESTROYING DEMOCRACY THRU IGNORANT AND INTOLERANT FEARMONGERING.

Videos about science and psilocybin are funny. They show nerds trying to catch up with common sense.

Musk vies with his fellow materialists in his attempt to diss humans as insignificant. But we are not insignificant. The very term "insignificant" is a human creation. Consciousness rules. Indeed, consciousness makes the rules. Without us, there would only be inchoate particles.

Everyone's biggest concern is the economy? Is nobody concerned that Trump has promised to pardon insurrectionists and get revenge on critics? Is no one concerned that Trump taught Americans to doubt democracy by questioning our election fairness before one single vote was cast?

Our government treats drugs like uranium and spends hundreds of billions of dollars trying to scare us about them.


Click here to see All Tweets against the hateful War on Us






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