Drug Testing

A post on The Wall Street Journal shared that cocaine use among investment professionals at Wall Street has gone down, although they seem to have replaced coke with marijuana and pills.

This does not mean, however, that Wall Street is a drug-infested profession; for the most part, according to the feature, Wall Street is relatively clean, with only 2 percent of the industry failing drug tests annually, according to drug-testing firm Sterling Infosystems Inc.

Adam Zoia, CEO of executive recruiting firm Glocap Search LLC, shared: “I think the incidence of hard drug use is lower today than it was 10 or 15 years ago… “The banks, in particular, are pretty persnickity on background checks.”

The thing, however, is that drug testing is usually only done among new employees, and random drug testing is rarely done on existing employees; this was revealed by someone described as “a spokesman for a bulge-bracket bank” who requested for anonymity.

That being said, psychologists and counselors say that drug abuse among existing Wall Street employees is not slowing down; if anything, it seems to be peaking, due in part to the credit crisis. Clinical Director William Heran shared that the 24-bed luxury rehab facility Seabrook House in Pennsylvania has catered to quite a number of patients who worked on Wall Street. Seabrook charges $24,000 for a three-month program.

Robert Curry, founder of Turning Point for Leaders, an intervention and rehab company based in Connecticut, shared: “Investment bankers — gunslingers, as we call them — are highly prone to addiction, and there’s a lot of denial among employers. The attitude is: ‘If they can’t fix themselves, then they’re going to have to live with it. We’re not going to put any time and effort into it.”