Drug Use by Employees in the Workplace and Employees' Performance in Some Selected Organisations in Ghana

Abstract

Drug users abuse both licit and illicit drugs and the situation had become worse due to the use of alcohol and tobacco products which are legally sold drugs. The research sought to find out drug use by employees in the workplace and its effects on work performance. The research design employed was the descriptive survey. Questionnaires and interview schedule were used as the instruments to collect data. The sample for the study was 305. The data collected was analyzed using frequencies and Percentages. The results indicated that drugs used at workplace were alcoholic beverages, paracetamol, amodaiquine, marijuana and tobacco products. Majority of respondents said drug users had low performance at work place. Mechanism to control drug use at workplace included; counselling, queries, transfer, demotion, dismissal, open release, handing over culprit to the police and ban from station in the case of drivers. From the findings, it was recommended that employers need to employ requisite tools to detect drugs users during interviews and at workplace and the government of Ghana should enact laws to limit the use of raw or pure alcohol to only pharmaceutical industries that use alcohol as raw material.