by Mark A. de Bernardo

About the author: Mark A. de Bernardo, a labor and employment attorney, is the executive director of the Institute for a Drug-Free Workplace in Washington, D.C.

How big is America’s drug problem"
Enormous. The U.S. government reports that 9.7 million Americans used marijuana and 1.9 million used cocaine in the last month. Today, drugs oftentimes are stronger (marijuana harvested recently in northern California had 22 times the THC content of late ’60s marijuana, THC being the psychoactive ingredient in the drug), cheaper (a “hit” of crack is still available for as little as $5 in many cities), and more lethal (record numbers of overdoses and medical emergencies in recent years) than ever before. Perhaps most tragically, as many as 375,000 “coke babies” have been born in the United States in...