CDL Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse stats from 2020

Posted January 29, 2021

The CDL Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse has been around for a little over a year. The number of portal accounts, requested queries, and data submissions continue to increase.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) provided Clearinghouse statistics as of January 1, 2021, to summarize its busy first year of operation.

Number of accounts

The Clearinghouse has 1,767,885 unique accounts, with some users registering as multiple roles. The following summarizes the accounts based on role:

In many cases, more than one user account is associated with a single organization.

Queries requested since launch

Effective January 6, 2020, employers are required to query in the Clearinghouse when hiring someone in safety-sensitive position under Part 382, and annually thereafter.

The first annual query of the Clearinghouse for current drivers (who were in a motor carrier’s Part 382 program as of January 6, 2020) was due no later than January 5, 2021.

Queries since January 6, 2020

Reported violations

Employers, designated C/TPAs, or MROs, depending on the specific violation, are required to report drug and alcohol violations occurring since January 6, 2020, under Part 382.

Part 382 drug violations

Part 382 alcohol violations

Out of the positive drug tests reported, the drug of choice was marijuana with 29,511 positive test results. Cocaine was a distant second with 7,940 positive tests.

Return-to-duty process

As of January 1, 2021, almost 52,000 drivers had at least one violation entered in the Clearinghouse.
Of those drivers:

• 45,475 currently remain in a prohibited status; and
• 6,513 were no longer in a prohibited status.

A driver is in a prohibited status if there is no record in the database of both a completed SAP evaluation and treatment and negative return-to-duty test. The Clearinghouse reports 34,769 of the 45,475 drivers in a prohibited status have yet to start the return-to-duty process. In other words, the SAP has not entered a record of an assessment.

Of the 6,513 drivers who are no longer in the prohibited status, none have completed their follow-up testing plan.

This article was written by Kathy Close of J. J. Keller & Associates, Inc.