Ask X3What does 49 CFR 382.701 (Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse) require?
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As Ask X3, your fleet-compliance assistant, here is what 49 CFR 382.701 requires for motor-carrier owners:
* Pre-Employment Queries: You must not let a driver perform a safety-sensitive function without first running a full pre-employment query of the Clearinghouse to check for drug or alcohol violations, test refusals, or actual knowledge of violations. This requires the driver's specific consent and releases the violation information to you.
* Annual Queries: You must run a query at least once per year for all employees subject to drug and alcohol testing. You can use a limited query for this (which only tells you if information exists, but does not release it), provided you obtain the driver's consent. You can get driver consent for limited queries to cover multiple years.
* Follow-Up on Limited Queries: If a limited query shows that information exists about a driver, you must conduct a full query within 24 hours. If you fail to do this within 24 hours, you must immediately take the driver off safety-sensitive functions until you run the full query and the results show no prohibitions.
* Prohibitions: You must not allow any driver to perform safety-sensitive functions if a Clearinghouse query shows they have a drug or alcohol violation, test refusal, or reported actual knowledge. The only exceptions are if the query shows the driver has completed the required Substance Abuse Professional (SAP) evaluation, education/treatment, a negative return-to-duty test, and follow-up testing (or you assume responsibility for managing the follow-up testing).
* Recordkeeping: You must keep records of every query and all information received for 3 years. Maintaining a valid Clearinghouse registration fulfills this recordkeeping requirement.