Norway

General aspects
Norway has a population of about 4.5 million inhabitants. In 2002 approximately 2 500 people were tested at workplaces. About 2-3 % of the urines contained drugs, if all medicinal drugs wee excluded the percentages was approximately 0.5. Since 2002 the number of people controlled per year has dropped somewhat, to about 1 700.

Legal aspects
According to Norwegian law it is forbidden to use all drugs which are on the list of narcotics. This list also includes medicinal drugs, which are allowed when prescribed by a doctor. The detection of a drug on the list in a biological sample might thus constitute evidence for an illegal act.

There are no laws specifically regulating the use of drug testing procedures at workplaces. In practice there should exist a drug policy within the company and the employer should obtain consent from every employee involved in any potential testing program before testing begins. There are official guidelines, issued by the Directorate of health and social affairs on how to collect, handle and analyze urine samples in situations where the results might lead to negative sanctions against the sample donor, as in e.g. workplace testing. These guidelines also contain requirements with respect to the qualifications of the laboratory involved and states that the analysis/interpretation of results should occur according to forensic toxicological standards. Most, if not all such samples are therefore analyzed at the Division of Forensic Toxicology and Drug Abuse, Norwegian Institute of Public Health.

Summary
Workplace drug testing in Norway has so far been performed to a rather limited extent, and the interest has been declining during recent years. There exist guidelines for legally defensible drug testing in urine samples.