Alaska Legislature passes bill enabling employers to use saliva tests for drugs, alcohol

Sen. Jesse Bjorkman, R-Nikiski, speaks astatine a March 19, 2024, news conference. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)

More Alaska employers whitethorn usage saliva for supplier and intoxicant testing, acknowledgment to a caller measure that passed nan Alaska Legislature connected nan last time of nan regular session.

Awaiting Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s information is Senate Bill 196, which adds saliva testing to nan state’s “safe harbor” laws for supplier and intoxicant testing by employers. 

Sen. Jesse Bjorkman, R-Nikiski, sponsored nan measure aft a petition from nan Alaska Power Association connected behalf of section powerfulness companies.

“I deliberation ultimately, it is simply a time- and money-saver for industry, and it besides gets supplier testing retired of nan measurement for labor successful a measurement that’s little invasive,” he said. “I deliberation that’s good. As agelong arsenic group aren’t doing narcotics aliases drinking erstwhile and wherever they shouldn’t be, they shouldn’t person thing to interest about.”

Alaska’s safe-harbor laws, which shield employers from ineligible claims related to supplier and intoxicant testing, don’t presently see saliva testing. 

Testifying successful support of nan bill, representatives of nan Alaska Power Association wrote that saliva testing is absent from Alaska’s safe-harbor laws because they were written earlier saliva testing became common.

Last year, nan national government approved saliva testing for its drug-and-alcohol testing programs. The U.S. Department of Health and Social Services had been considering saliva testing since 2004 but didn’t deem nan exertion capable until recently.

The measure is constricted to testing of labor by their employer; different states person gone further than Alaska by allowing constabulary departments to return saliva samples in bid to trial drivers for supplier and intoxicant intoxication. Alaska law is still constricted to “chemical study of activity aliases blood.”

Saliva testing has grown much communal nationally amid advances successful exertion and since nan legalization of recreational cannabis in galore states. 

THC, nan main psychoactive chemic successful cannabis, isn’t detectable by a modular breathalyzer, and THC tin linger successful humor and urine for weeks, making those testing methods a mediocre judge of intoxication.