Ten90 Solutions LLC

Imagine that the Department of Health and Human Services, which sets the standards for drug testing, and what drugs must be screened, for Federal employees, way back in the days of the Obama administration undertakes a review of it policies and decides that the widespread use and abuse of synthetic opiates represents a.....

a challenge, a threat, a danger, and that testing protocols should be amended to include screening for such compounds among Federal employees subject to the testing regimen.

Who's going to argue with that?  Nobody, or almost nobody. Not me, that's for certain.

So on January 23, 2017, before Tom Price was confirmed by the Senate as the new Secretary of HHS and started accumulating super-platinim frequent flier perks on .1Percent Airlines and OnlySuckersFlyCommercial Jets, HHS publishes its new Mandatory Guidelines for Federal Workplace Drug Testing Programs. 

Now imagine that HHS sets the pace,  and that other cabinet level departments, including the Department of Transportation,  are required to bring their programs for testing employees in the industries those cabinet level departments regulate into conformity with the HHS standard. 

OK.  Easy as pie.  January 23, 2017, HHS adds the synthetic opiates to the drug testing protocols and... can you guess?  January 23, 2017, the Department of Transportation, even before Elaine Chao was confirmed as Secretary, issued its Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM), in order to bring its drug testing requirements into conformity, comments solicited.  Comments closed in March 2017.   And then? 

Nothing.  For eight months.  Except media reports on increasing opioid abuse and addiction and voila, November 13, 2017, DOT publishes its final rule, "Procedures...."   

Pleased as punch, Secretary Chao, stated "The opioid crisis is a threat to public safety when it involves safety sensitive employees in the operation of any kind of vehicle or transport." 

Remember those words. 

After 10 years or so of getting exactly nowhere with a regulation governing medical fitness of duty standards for safety sensitive railroad employees, we get, and in 10 months a new drug panel screen.   

After FRA withdraws from the rule-making process for the testing and treatment of moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea among safetey sensitive rail employees, we get a new drug panel screen.

Despite the fact that OSA has been identified as a contributory factor, if not the direct cause, of fatal railroad accidents far greater in number than those in which opioid usage might be implicated, we get only a new drug screen.   

FRA claims it withdrew from the proposed rule-making because it was about to publish its rule on mandatory railroad risk reduction programs, and wants to see what the railroads themselves come up with regarding OSA testing and treatment.    

So where's the rule on risk reduction programs?  It's already 5 years overdue.

When will the rule go in effect?  It's already 5 years overdue.  

How can FRA even prepare to monitor the results of railroad OSA programs, if  a) the programs differ in substance and application  b) there is no mandatory reporting on OSA testing and treatment?   

The screening for synthetic opiates that Secretary Chao and the administration flog as being life-saving?   It's an administrative adjustment to an established program.  It is not a bold, dramatic, impassioned intervention by a government determined to protect life and limb in the conduct of transportation.   

The advertising is just dandy, but all that's being sold is the advertising.   The advertising allows the administration to take credit for a regulation and process it did not initiate; and for "remedying" a problem before the problem has been quantified. 

If I were a cynical, jaded person, I'd point out how perfectly this opioid testing addition serves to distract from the bigger issues threatening safe train operations.  Everytime I say that, I find out that you can never be too cynical, too jade.

David Schanoes 

November 15, 2017

Great moments in rock 'n' roll history: 1966 The Young Rascals "Good Lovin' "

"Now baby,                                                 it's for sure,                                               I got the fever                                       you got the cure"