We anticipated legislation allowing employers to discriminate against employees who are medical marijuana cardholders. We defeated this proposal in 2007 mostly because time ran out before the bill was moved to the House floor. Representative Mike Schaufler (D-Happy Valley) insisted on introducing similar legislation for this short session. However, because House leadership would only allow a “compromise” version to go through, the bill was never heard because there was no compromise to which either the proponents (business community) or opponents (ACLU and other advocates) could agree. We expect this issue to be back in 2009.
This proposal, like SB 465 (2007), presumes that medical marijuana patients are impaired simply by virtue of being card holders and would allow employers to terminate the employment of card holders. We believe that a person who shows up to work and is actually impaired (from lawful or unlawful drugs, alcohol, emotional distress or any other reason) can be sanctioned by the employer. And employers who run high-risk equipment should always be determining each day whether an employee is safe to operate machinery. But relying on a drug test, often urine analysis, does not address this issue of actual impairment. Such tests can take days to get results and will not accurately determine if someone is actually impaired. Likewise, such tests may detect residual components of legally ingested marijuana that may remain in the system up to 30 days.
We will continue to oppose this type of legislation.
DIED IN COMMITTEE
