Alaska Drug Testing Laws for Employers

Voluntary, With a Real Payoff

AS 23.10.600 through 23.10.699 is opt-in, and the incentive is litigation protection. Under AS 23.10.600(a), an employer that has adopted a policy and initiated a program cannot be sued for actions taken in good faith based on a positive drug or alcohol impairment test, for failing to test, for failing to detect a specific drug or a medical or psychological condition, or for terminating or suspending the program.

AS 23.10.600(b) goes further, barring any damages action based on test results unless the employer acted on a false positive it knew or clearly should have known was in error and ignored the true result because of reckless or malicious disregard for the truth or wilful intent to deceive. Subsection (c) supplies a rebuttable presumption of validity where the employer complied, and shields the employer from monetary damages where reliance on a false positive was reasonable and in good faith. AS 23.10.610 extends a parallel bar to defamation, libel, slander and reputational claims.

That is one of the stronger protection packages on this site. It is also the whole return — there is no premium credit tied to the chapter.

Getting Inside the Protection

• 30-day notice to employees before the program may be initiated.
• Ten mandatory policy contents, including delivery of results within five working days and a 72-hour confidential explanation meeting.
• Covered positions identified in the policy, with the decision to test all or part of the workforce resting on safety considerations.
• Off-site testing at a laboratory approved or certified by SAMHSA, the College of American Pathologists, or the American Association of Clinical Chemists.
• Confirmation by a different analytical process, specifically GC-MS, with no reliance on a positive until a licensed physician or osteopath has reviewed it.
• 48-hour physician contact: the reviewing physician must contact the employee within 48 hours, interpret the result for legal use, and report results caused by prescription medication as negative.
• Reasonable suspicion training: at least one designated employee must receive 60 minutes of alcohol misuse training plus 60 minutes of controlled substance training.

On-Site Testing Is Allowed, With Conditions

Alaska expressly permits on-site testing, which several restrictive states do not. The conditions are specific: FDA-approved products used per the manufacturer's instructions, administered only by an administrator certified under AS 23.10.650(b) — and that administrator must be trained in person by the manufacturer or its representative, certified in writing as competent, trained to recognize adulteration, and must sign a confidentiality statement.

The consequence rule matters as much: no permanent employment action may rest on an unconfirmed on-site screen positive, and wages and benefits must be restored if the confirmation comes back negative, or if the positive is explained by a valid prescription or lawful non-prescription drug.

The Random Alcohol Gap

AS 23.10.620(d) provides that in addition to other tests, an employer may require employees or groups of employees to undergo drug testing on a random or chance basis. There is no rate cap and no limitation to safety-sensitive positions, though the policy must still identify covered positions and base the all-or-part decision on safety. AS 23.10.699(8) defines random as a scientifically valid method ensuring all covered employees have an equal chance of selection, so you should be able to document that your tool does that.

The drafting quirk is what subsection (d) omits. It authorizes random drug testing and says nothing about random alcohol impairment testing, even though the chapter permits alcohol impairment testing of employees generally. Whether unannounced random alcohol testing sits inside the chapter's protection is not answered by the text — which matters precisely because the protection is the reason to be in the chapter at all.

A similar asymmetry runs through applicant testing, which the chapter addresses for drugs rather than alcohol.

Cannabis: No Protection, One Open Definition

Alaska legalized adult use by initiative in 2014, but AS 17.38.220(a) provides that nothing in the chapter requires an employer to permit or accommodate marijuana in the workplace or affects the ability of employers to have policies restricting employee use. Subsection (d) preserves the right of an employer controlling private property to prohibit or regulate marijuana there. No employment protection for medical patients was located.

There is, though, a definitional question worth putting to counsel before assuming the safe harbor covers a THC positive. AS 23.10.699(3) defines drugs for the testing chapter as a substance considered unlawful under AS 11.71 or the metabolite of the substance. AS 11.71.190(b) still provides that marijuana is a schedule VIA controlled substance. And AS 17.38.020 makes specified adult personal use lawful notwithstanding other law.

Whether a marijuana metabolite in an adult of legal age is a drug within that definition turns on statutory construction and ultimately on case law. We do not resolve it. It is a live question for an Alaska employer relying on the chapter's protection for a cannabis-based decision.

Workers' Compensation

AS 23.30.235 provides that compensation may not be allowed for an injury proximately caused by intoxication, or proximately caused by the employee being under the influence of drugs unless taken as prescribed by the employee's physician.

That is a proximate-cause standard rather than a positive-test standard. A post-accident positive is evidence, not an automatic bar, and the section contains no presumption shifting the burden to the employee after a positive or a refusal — unlike North Dakota, Louisiana or Kentucky.

Where This Lands

Alaska's employment base runs through oil and gas extraction, commercial fishing and seafood processing, mining, aviation and air cargo, healthcare, construction, and tourism. Several of those are heavily federally regulated, and AS 23.10.670 is the provision a DOT-regulated employer should read first. For everyone else, the 30-day clock and the on-site administrator training requirement are the two items most likely to need attention before a program starts.