The Ran Zero Reasonable-Suspicion Drug Tests in Three Years
Summary
The Drug-Free Workplace Act of 1988 requires federal agencies to test employees in sensitive posts for illegal drugs. A Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration audit issued August 10, 2026 found the ran zero reasonable-suspicion drug tests across fiscal years 2022 through 2024 -- even though its own Office of Investigations fielded 78 drug-related referrals between October 2022 and April 2025, opened 22 cases, and referred 11 employees for prosecution, all of whom the Justice Department declined to charge. The agency also missed its own 10 percent random-testing floor every one of those three years and could not produce notification records for an estimated 88.7 percent of the employees covered by the program. The agreed with all seven of the auditors' recommendations.
The column that stayed empty
The tests applicants for Criminal Investigation jobs and randomly tests employees in sensitive "Testing Designated Positions" -- those who carry firearms, hold high clearances, or are Senate-confirmed. Figure 2 of the report⧉ counts 1,991 applicant tests and 522 random tests over three years. The reasonable-suspicion column -- ordered when a manager suspects a specific employee -- reads 0, 0, 0, even though management named five 2024 employees it suspected and never tested.
View data as table
| Applicant tests | 1,991 |
|---|---|
| TDP random tests | 522 |
| Reasonable-suspicion tests | 0 |
Seventy-eight referrals, zero prosecutions
From October 2022 through April 2025, 's Office of Investigations took in 78 referrals on employees over drug allegations. It opened 22 cases and referred 11 for prosecution; the Justice Department declined every one. Three of those employees drew discipline up to suspension, three resigned or retired, and five faced no action or no documented outcome.
View data as table
| Referred to investigators | 78 |
|---|---|
| Investigations opened | 22 |
| Referred for prosecution | 11 |
| Prosecuted by DOJ | 0 |
The 10-percent floor, missed every year
The 's own Drug-Free Workplace Plan requires random-testing at least 10 percent of Testing Designated Position employees each year. It hit 4.0 percent in 2022, 9.3 percent in 2023, and a claimed 8.6 percent in 2024 -- verified at only 8.2 percent, since just 206 of 216 claimed tests could be documented. Testing lapsed entirely from November 2024 to March 2025 after the selection system broke with no backup.
View data as table
| FY 2022 | 4% |
|---|---|
| FY 2023 | 9.3% |
| FY 2024 | 8.6% |
The paperwork was thinner still: auditors sampled 53 2024 employees and found 47 -- 88.7 percent -- missing notification records, projecting to roughly 2,220 of the 2,503-person testing pool. A 2018 review flagged the same gap; the central log the promised to build was never populated.
The takeaway
- The one test built for suspected users went unused for three years. Zero reasonable-suspicion tests in s 2022-2024, while investigators took in 78 drug-related referrals and management named five suspected 2024 employees it never tested.
- Referrals rarely ended in consequences. Of 78 referrals, 22 became investigations and 11 went to , which declined every one; five of those 11 employees faced no action or no documented outcome.
- The numbers sent to Congress overstate a drug-free workforce. The missed its 10 percent random-testing floor all three years and couldn't document roughly 8 in 10 employees' notifications. It agreed with all seven recommendations. (High confidence.)
All figures from Report No. 2026-100-041, "The Did Not Provide Adequate Oversight to Ensure a Drug-Free Workplace" (Aug. 10, 2026), read from the issuer's own site (tigta.gov) and mirrored on oversight.gov. The report anonymizes all employees; this article names only the office and program, not individuals.
Sources(2) ▾
- Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, The IRS Did Not Provide Adequate Oversight to Ensure a Drug-Free Workplace (2026-08-10) — Final Audit Report No. 2026-100-041 (Audit No. 2025100015), issued August 10, 2026, assessing the effectiveness of the Drug-Free Workplace Program in identifying and testing employees for illegal drug use over fiscal years 2022 through 2024. Every load-bearing figure in this piece -- the zero reasonable-suspicion tests, the 78 investigative referrals, the random-testing shortfall, and the missing-notification estimate -- comes from this report's Highlights page, Results of Review, Figures 1 and 2, and Appendix I. Fetched directly from the issuer's own domain (www.tigta.gov, HTTP 200, 3.26 MB); the same PDF is mirrored on oversight.gov (doc-oversight-mirror) for corroboration. The Internet Archive Wayback save endpoint returned HTTP 429 (rate limited) throughout this session and no prior capture exists, so no archiveUrl is recorded; the durable audit trail is the two independent, byte-identical copies (issuer tigta.gov and oversight.gov, matching MD5). tigta.gov · original document
- Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (oversight.gov), The IRS Did Not Provide Adequate Oversight to Ensure a Drug-Free Workplace (oversight.gov mirror) (2026-08-10) — The identical report as hosted on oversight.gov, the federal inspectors-general community's central report repository. Used only to corroborate that the issuer-hosted copy and the community-repository copy are the same document; all facts are cited to the issuer-hosted tigta.gov URL. oversight.gov · original document
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The ran zero reasonable-suspicion drug tests in fiscal years 2022 through 2024 -- even as its own investigators fielded 78 drug-related referrals on employees over roughly the same span. A TIGTA audit released August 10, 2026⧉ found the agency "did not provide adequate oversight to ensure a drug-free workplace."