ATA and Six House Lawmakers Are Pushing HHS to Stop Stalling on Modern Drug Testing
The trucking industry is turning up the heat on Washington again over drug testing, and this time the pressure is aimed directly at HHS.
On April 17, the American Trucking Associations backed a letter from six House lawmakers urging Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to clear the roadblocks that are still preventing wider use of oral-fluid and hair testing in federally regulated workplace drug programs.
The timing isn't a coincidence. DOT already amended its drug-testing rules to allow oral-fluid testing back in 2023 and updated Part 40 again in 2024 — but the method still isn't fully usable for DOT-regulated employers because the federal system doesn't have the required certified oral-fluid labs in place. DOT says employers can begin using oral-fluid testing only when two HHS-certified oral-fluid laboratories exist. As of the latest federal listings, there are still none.
That's the core of the problem. The lawmakers and ATA argue that oral-fluid testing has been approved on paper, but the real-world rollout has been buried under a regulatory framework that treats workplace drug testing too much like a clinical medical-device program. Their position is that the FDA clearance process is the wrong fit for a forensic workplace testing system that already has federal oversight through SAMHSA and related certification programs.
Hair testing is part of the same fight. Congress first directed HHS back in 2015 to recognize hair testing as a legitimate alternative to urine testing for commercial motor vehicle drivers. That was nearly a decade ago. HHS still hasn't issued the needed guidance. The current congressional letter is calling on the agency to finish what Congress asked for instead of letting it sit in limbo for another year.
The lawmakers weren't vague about what they want. The letter specifically asks HHS to declare that workplace drug testing is non-clinical and outside FDA medical-device authority, confirm SAMHSA as the lead oversight body, give SAMHSA's Division of Workplace Programs the authority to update drug panels and testing technologies, and finalize the long-delayed hair-testing guidelines. The letter was signed by Reps. Andy Harris, Ben Cline, Pete Sessions, Mike Bost, Mike Collins, and Claudia Tenney.
ATA is framing this as a safety problem, not just a bureaucratic one. ATA President Chris Spear said HHS has dragged its feet on science-based drug-testing policy. The lawmakers backed that up with hard numbers — citing Quest Diagnostics data showing substituted drug specimens among federally regulated employees rose 370% from 2022 to 2023, while invalid specimens climbed 36% over the same period. Those aren't small numbers, and they go directly to the argument that the current urine-based system has a cheating problem that better testing methods could help address.
For carriers — especially small fleets — the appeal of oral-fluid and hair testing isn't complicated. Oral-fluid testing is significantly harder to game than a standard urine test and can be directly observed far more easily. Hair testing gives fleets a longer lookback window that can catch patterns a single urine test might never pick up. But until HHS changes the framework, both of those options remain largely out of reach in the DOT-regulated system, regardless of how badly carriers want to use them.
None of this creates a rule change today. This is pressure, not policy. But it's one more signal that the trucking industry is done waiting for modernization that keeps getting promised and never delivered. ATA and these lawmakers want HHS to stop treating this like an abstract regulatory project and start treating it like what it actually is for the people running trucks and managing fleets — a safety issue, a compliance issue, and a hiring issue all rolled into one.
The trucking industry is turning up the heat on Washington again over drug testing, and this time the pressure is aimed directly at HHS.
On April 17, the American Trucking Associations backed a letter from six House lawmakers urging Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to clear the roadblocks that are still preventing wider use of oral-fluid and hair testing in federally regulated workplace drug programs.
The timing isn't a coincidence. DOT already amended its drug-testing rules to allow oral-fluid testing back in 2023 and updated Part 40 again in 2024 — but the method still isn't fully usable for DOT-regulated employers because the federal system doesn't have the required certified oral-fluid labs in place. DOT says employers can begin using oral-fluid testing only when two HHS-certified oral-fluid laboratories exist. As of the latest federal listings, there are still none.
That's the core of the problem. The lawmakers and ATA argue that oral-fluid testing has been approved on paper, but the real-world rollout has been buried under a regulatory framework that treats workplace drug testing too much like a clinical medical-device program. Their position is that the FDA clearance process is the wrong fit for a forensic workplace testing system that already has federal oversight through SAMHSA and related certification programs.
Hair testing is part of the same fight. Congress first directed HHS back in 2015 to recognize hair testing as a legitimate alternative to urine testing for commercial motor vehicle drivers. That was nearly a decade ago. HHS still hasn't issued the needed guidance. The current congressional letter is calling on the agency to finish what Congress asked for instead of letting it sit in limbo for another year.
The lawmakers weren't vague about what they want. The letter specifically asks HHS to declare that workplace drug testing is non-clinical and outside FDA medical-device authority, confirm SAMHSA as the lead oversight body, give SAMHSA's Division of Workplace Programs the authority to update drug panels and testing technologies, and finalize the long-delayed hair-testing guidelines. The letter was signed by Reps. Andy Harris, Ben Cline, Pete Sessions, Mike Bost, Mike Collins, and Claudia Tenney.
ATA is framing this as a safety problem, not just a bureaucratic one. ATA President Chris Spear said HHS has dragged its feet on science-based drug-testing policy. The lawmakers backed that up with hard numbers — citing Quest Diagnostics data showing substituted drug specimens among federally regulated employees rose 370% from 2022 to 2023, while invalid specimens climbed 36% over the same period. Those aren't small numbers, and they go directly to the argument that the current urine-based system has a cheating problem that better testing methods could help address.
For carriers — especially small fleets — the appeal of oral-fluid and hair testing isn't complicated. Oral-fluid testing is significantly harder to game than a standard urine test and can be directly observed far more easily. Hair testing gives fleets a longer lookback window that can catch patterns a single urine test might never pick up. But until HHS changes the framework, both of those options remain largely out of reach in the DOT-regulated system, regardless of how badly carriers want to use them.
None of this creates a rule change today. This is pressure, not policy. But it's one more signal that the trucking industry is done waiting for modernization that keeps getting promised and never delivered. ATA and these lawmakers want HHS to stop treating this like an abstract regulatory project and start treating it like what it actually is for the people running trucks and managing fleets — a safety issue, a compliance issue, and a hiring issue all rolled into one.
