HHS resets clock on long-awaited hair testing guidelines

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services plans to issue in October revised mandatory guidelines for testing hair under drug programs used at federal agencies, including the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

The new date for the revised guidelines, in the form of a supplemental Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, marks the third time it has been pushed back on HHS’s regulatory agenda after originally scheduled to be issued in June 2023.

“There are a number of reasons why the timeline for a particular regulatory or deregulatory action may shift,” FMCSA told FreightWaves previously, including additional time for research, analysis, and public engagement.

While moving from HHS guidelines to an FMCSA final rule could take months or years, the guidelines, if approved, would mark a major step toward potential mandatory hair testing of truck drivers.

Using hair to test for drugs is supported by the American Trucking Associations and is used by major trucking companies to screen their prospective employee drivers, including J.B. Hunt Transport (NASDAQ: JBHT) and Knight-Swift Transportation (NYSE: KNX).

A first attempt at mandatory guidelines issued in 2020 by the first Trump administration was not well received.

Large carriers argued that requiring an alternative urine or saliva sample as backup to any positive hair tests – stipulated in the 2020 proposal – rendered the guidelines ineffective, particularly for preemployment screening.

The detection window for drugs in urine and saliva tends to be much shorter than for hair samples, they argued, which could lead to both positive and negative test samples from the same donor.

The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association opposed the 2020 attempt at the guidelines as intrusive and discriminatory, and remains opposed to any hair-testing mandate initiated by HHS or Congress. OOIDA is particularly concerned about a bill introduced in July that would require FMCSA to accept positive hair drug test results into the agency’s Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse.

“This legislation would set a dangerous precedent by bypassing necessary technical feedback from HHS needed to answer critical questions about the accuracy of these tests,” the group told the U.S. Department of Transportation in comments filed earlier this month.