[T]he Government interest in testing without a showing of individualized suspicion is compelling. Employees subject to the tests discharge duties fraught with such risks of injury to others that even a momentary lapse of attention can have disastrous consequences based on the interest of the general public [...] While no procedure can identify all impaired employees with ease and perfect accuracy, the FRA regulations supply an effective means of deterring employees engaged in safety-sensitive tasks from using controlled substances or alcohol in the first place.

The dissenting opinion by Justices Marshall and Brennan illustrates the other side of the controversy:

The issue in this case is not whether declaring a war on illegal drugs is good public policy. The importance of ridding our society of such drugs is, by now, apparent to all. Rather, the issue here is whether the Government's deployment in that war of a particularly Draconian weapon - the compulsory collection and chemical testing of railroad workers' blood and urine - comports with the Fourth Amendment. Precisely because the need for action against the drug scourge is manifest, the need for vigilance against unconstitutional excess is great. History teaches that grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure. The World War II relocation-camp cases, Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U.S. 81 (1943); Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944), and the Red scare and McCarthy-era internal subversion cases, Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47 (1919); Dennis v. United States, 341 U.S. 494 (1951), are only the most extreme reminders that when we allow fundamental freedoms to be sacrificed in the name of real or perceived exigency, we invariably come to regret it.

In the United States today, random drug testing is used by a growing number of corporations, drug rehab centers, prisons, the military, police and fire departments, government agencies, and more recently, schools. This method may also be used on teens by their parents, or mandated to be performed on teens at school. The point of a random drug test is deterrence, as the threat of detection is much higher versus other testing methods. Various questionable methods are utilized to determine who gets tested, ranging from drawing names out of a hat, (Government mandated testing requires a scientifically provable method of selection.) to using more defensible methods such as robust random number generators. However, many random drug testing selection systems are legally indefensible because there is nothing to prevent users from targeting individuals by regenerating names with the random generator until the desired result is produced. (Computer generated random selection should have traceable data to validate the legitimacy of the selection.) Most systems have no tamper-proof audit trail (database records are easy to change, so employers or their testing agents must not have access to the audit trail records for the random selection to be defensible). Finally, hiring third parties to randomly select drug testing subjects is not legally defensible because there is no way of proving that there was no collusion to select a specific individual. (I don't believe this is true. A scientifically random selection process is legally defensible.) You are correct that many loopholes plague this system and many people have lost their jobs, reputations, college savings and their homes without as much as an apology from the drug testing giants and the government.

Many apparent conflicts-of-interest exist among service providers and government authorities. In fact, forbidden relationships thrive. The firewalls assuring separation and impartiality don't work. By cultivating relationships forbidden by the regulations the credibility of the entire government sponsored testing program is jeopardized.

While a goal of random drug testing may be to discourage illegal drug use among employees, etc. a goal of so-called "random" testing may be to destroy the career of the tested person, or to prevent the reunification of a family, too. The goals of drug testing vary depending on the motives of those conducting the tests. D.O.T. mandated testing, as codified in CFR 49 parts 40 and 382, define and establish thousands of specific, highly detailed and requisite protocol which must be followed. However, without an effective governing body to monitor, to investigate allegations of non-compliance, and to enforce these regulations, the stated goals of the government are meaningless. Unfortunately, courts throughout the United States are divided on the issue of the right of individuals to bring lawsuits regarding violations of these regulations. In other words, if a laboratory failed to maintain quality controls and your specimen was contaminated at the lab, (this happens) resulting in your termination, many courts deny you and me a legal remedy. Some courts hold that the government created and published strict criteria for laboratories and all other service providers to follow to prevent this kind of failure, thereby giving us substantial "built-in" protection. Through the denial of a private cause of action in these kinds of cases, someone could sabotage your test intentionally with complete impunity. In Drake, after 10 years of legal battles, mostly pro-se, a New York appeals court concluded recently that the language of the 1991 Omnibus Employee Testing Act does not bar common law torts. This is a significant break through for the tested, at-will employee. It is just a beginning, but it is an important legal step in the direction of protecting innocent workers.

Eisenhower warned America of the dangers of a "military industrial complex." The same dynamics have created a collaboration between our government and the commercial drug testing industry.