The use of drugs such as alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, party drugs, heroin and other drugs is a major problem of modern society. Increasing access to drugs, increasing acceptance and recreational use among young people, and the influence of the entertainment industry are one of the leading problems of modern society.
In master's thesis we focused on this topic which represents major problem on safety and health at work as well. In addition to problems related to migrant workers from third world countries and an increasingly aging workforce, it is one of the biggest problems and challenges of safety and health at work on the labor market in Europe and the world.
The master's thesis presents student work and various definitions, medical examinations under the Law of Occupational safety and health and how the law defines the position of alcohol and drugs in the workplace. We presented the prevalence of drug and alcohol use among young people, their involvement in work and occupational health and safety. We also touched social issues, what are the personal factors of young people which contribute to drug use. We generally presented groups of drugs such as central nervous system depressants, stimulants, hallucinogens, and cannabinoids, and introduced the main representatives of these groups; alcohol, cocaine, crack, ecstasy, LSD. We have described the short-term effects of drug use that may occur in workers or student workers at work, as well as long-term effects and consequences that could occur after prolonged abuse. In the following chapters, we presented the increasingly problematic recreational drug use and described the signs and consequences of drug abuse in the workplace and what are the factors that contribute to drug use in the workplace. We described the tasks of management and supervisors and drug and alcohol policy, drug testing, dealing with abuse, and prevention programs for drug use in the workplace.
As part of the experimental work, more than 1,100 students from various faculties of the University of Ljubljana were surveyed. We were interested in their personal attitude to drugs, their perception and use of psychoactive substances in their private and, above all, work life, as well as how their colleagues, students and full-time employees perceive drugs and alcohol at work and the importance of the employer in drugs and alcohol work problem.
We found that the surveyed students are no strangers with use of drugs and alcohol in their free time, as it was found that 67% of them use it on a weekly basis. As expected, most of them used marijuana (68%) and alcohol (97%). It was also found that 46% of the surveyed students already felt the effects of dazedness or drunkenness at the workplace, and 23% of students were dazed or drunk at the workplace.
We found that as many as 79% of employers did not send student workers to a preventive health check-up before student work, and 90% of employers do not implement any preventive measures in the field of drug and alcohol use at the workplace. It was also found that most employers do not conduct drug and alcohol tests. 59% of surveyed students believe that the problem of drug and alcohol use in the future workforce is increasing. The objectives of the master's thesis have been achieved. I emphasized that the use of drugs and alcohol among young people, as a future and already the current workforce, is high, that employers are not aware of the problem of drug and alcohol use and the problematic effects on their work organization, and that this problem will continue to grow.
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