An Analysis of Worker Drug Use and Workplace Policies and Programs

2.2 The Co-occurrence of Current Illicit Drug Use and Heavy Alcohol Use

The distributions of demographic characteristics presented in Figures 2.1 and 2.2 suggest that there may be overlap among full-time workers who reported current illicit drug use and those who reported heavy alcohol use. For example, both groups appear to have consisted mainly of white workers and male workers. In order to explore the possibility that the same workers tended to report a similar pattern of use, Figure 2.3 provides a picture of the percentage and estimated number of three groups: those who reported current illicit drug use only, those who reported heavy alcohol use only, and those who reported concurrent illicit drug use and heavy alcohol use in the past month. [ The results represent only those who reported current illicit drug use and/or heavy alcohol use. They do not identify specifically those who may have used illicit drugs and engaged in heavy alcohol use on the same occasion.] Two percent of the full-time workers (representing about 1.6 million workers) reported both of these behaviors, about five-and-a-half percent reported current illicit drug use and no heavy alcohol use, and slightly more than six percent reported heavy alcohol use only. Thus about 27 percent of current illicit drug users used both illicit drugs in the past 30 days and alcohol heavily, and 24 percent of heavy alcohol users were also current illicit drug users. Therefore, although both current illicit drug users and heavy alcohol users were inclined to be male workers and white workers, most tended to engage in only one of these behaviors.

This page was last updated on June 03, 2008.

SAMHSA, an agency in the Department of Health and Human Services, is the Federal Government's lead agency for improving the quality and availability of substance abuse prevention, addiction treatment, and mental health services in the United States.