Amphetamine, Pain-Killer Use Is Hiring Hurdle in Appalachia’s Oil-and-Gas Boom CARNEGIE, Pa.—Dawn Fuchs’s trucking and environmental-cleanup business is thriving, thanks mostly to a boom in naturalgas drilling in western Pennsylvania. But she faces an unexpected hurdle to growth: More job applicants are failing drug tests. “It’s getting harder and harder to find clean applicants,” said…

Scientists have identified genetic circumstances under which common mutations on two genes interact in the presence of cocaine to produce a nearly eight-fold increased risk of death as a result of abusing the drug. An estimated one in three whites who died of cocaine exposure is a carrier of variants that make cocaine abuse particularly…

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio prison officials are concerned with the relatively high percentage of inmates who tested positive for drugs last year, a newspaper reported Monday. Annual drug testing in October by the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction found 3.32 percent testing positive. Most had used marijuana, but there were also positive results for…

All Students to Submit to Drug Testing at Rockhurst H.S. Citing an attitude of permissiveness among students about drug and alcohol use, the Rockhurst High School Board of Trustees unanimously decided to begin a program of mandatory and random drug and alcohol testing of all students beginning in the 2013-2014 school year. School Official and…

Two sources close to the team expect suspensions to be lifted for Wagner A highly reputable source has told the Daily Pennsylvanian that Miles Cartwright, Henry Brooks, Tony Hicks, Darien Nelson-Henry and Steve Rennard were all suspended for Penn basketball’s game at Delaware on Dec. 21 after failing random drug tests. The official word after…

Don’t roll those joints just yet, truckers and pilots. Pot-smokers rejoiced on Election Day when Colorado and Washington state residents voted to legalize recreational marijuana use and let individuals 21 or older have up to an ounce of pot without repercussion. But the Department of Transportation isn’t smoking that peace pipe. DOT’s Office of Drug…

The long-haired Grateful Dead used to sing about “Truckin’” on “reds, vitamin C and cocaine.” Now, some lawmakers see hair as the best way to test truckers for drug use. That’s just the latest front in a broader federal crackdown on drugged driving. This summer, Congress required the Department of Transportation to create a database…

St. Mary’s High School has adopted a drug testing policy that will begin with voluntary testing in March but be mandatory for all students in the 2013-14 school year, the school announced Wednesday. The legalization of marijuana in Colorado, which detractors say will be easier for kids to obtain, was one reason the school’s executive…

As efforts to crack down on the abuse of prescription drugs have worked, a new problem has emerged, with addicts who can no longer get their fix by popping pills turning to the old-fashioned street drug heroin, health and law enforcement officials say. The trend shows up in local arrests, drug seizures and overdose deaths.…