Medical Marijuana (1 Viewer)

[Sam Posten]

As someone in a soon to be legal recreationally state my gut feeling is that two classes of citizens are going to exist: those whose jobs don’t hang in the balance and those who do. This is not a situation that can exist for long.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

As someone in a soon to be legal recreationally state my gut feeling is that two classes of citizens are going to exist: those whose jobs don’t hang in the balance and those who do. This is not a situation that can exist for long.

My state of New York legalized it recreationally within the last couple years, and I thought some of the rules implemented alongside that were interesting:

-Employers are no longer allowed to test specifically for it, or deny employment based on a passive positive test. There are limited common sense exceptions. (In other words, retail clerks making minimum wage aren’t supposed to be tested anymore, but if you’re a bus driver who is allowed to be tested for alcohol use while on duty, you can still be tested for marijuana under those circumstances. Or if you’re a forklift operator and crash your vehicle at work, they can test you to see if you were intoxicated, the same way they would with alcohol.)

-The act of smoking/vaping/consuming marijuana is legal in all areas where cigarette smoking is permitted, with the obvious and reasonable exception of motor vehicles. If it’s a city sidewalk where tobacco smoking is permitted, marijuana is too. Conversely, if it’s a city park where no tobacco smoking is allowed, no marijuana smoking is allowed. Since tobacco smoking is banned inside all businesses and eateries in New York, that prohibition continues for marijuana. In other words, you can’t smoke it at a bar, movie theater or concert, but you can smoke it at that designated cigarette smokers alley next to a venue entrance.

-Marijuana use near schools is still prohibited in the same way alcohol use and tobacco use near schools is prohibited.

-Police officers no longer are allowed to use the odor of marijuana as the sole probable cause to conduct searches. You can no longer be stopped and frisked just for smelling like marijuana as you walk down the sidewalk. But if you get pulled over for erratic driving and the officer smells marijuana, that’s treated no differently than if you were driving erratically and reeked of alcohol.

These rules seem designed to take away the potential “gotcha” element of enforcement and to ensure that all people are treated equally.

I don’t know exactly how it applies to companies that operate in multiple states and/or countries, given that it is still illegal federally and in many international territories. I do know my employer, who operates in many states, updated their employee handbook to say that in states were it is legal, employees will not be tested for it, but that consuming it at work is still prohibited in the way drinking and smoking cigarettes on company property isn’t allowed either.

So it does seem like my state is trying to be fair about making sure that their decision to legalize it means that it actually is legal in practice.

 

[John Dirk]

but if you’re a bus driver who is allowed to be tested for alcohol use while on duty, you can still be tested for marijuana under those circumstances. Or if you’re a forklift operator and crash your vehicle at work, they can test you to see if you were intoxicated, the same way they would with alcohol.)

This is always where I felt the dilemma would eventually surface. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong but, unlike alcohol, the presence of marijuana traces in your system are not directly correlated with impairment. I've heard it can be detected up to 30 days after initial use.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

This is always where I felt the dilemma would eventually surface. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong but, unlike alcohol, the presence of marijuana traces in your system are not directly correlated with impairment. I've heard it can be detected up to 30 days after initial use.

Unlike other intoxicants, THC is absorbed into the lipids, so inactive traces can remain present in fatty tissues causing positive drug tests even after 30 days. I recall in college that some of my lighter friends were testing negative after a couple weeks, while some of the heavier set ones waited months.

That’s why many people believe that drug testing specifically for marijuana is more punitive than societally useful. You can go on an all night drinking bender and pass an alcohol screen a few hours later. You can ingest enough cocaine or heroin to kill an elephant and test negative the next morning. But you can fail a drug test for having smoked marijuana once a couple months ago in a legal context. The drug test a prospective employee may be forced to take cannot distinguish between an interviewee who showed up to the job interview high and one who smoked a joint on a trip to Amsterdam a month ago.

Labs, states and private employers are all scrambling to come up with a way to test current impairment rather than historical use. There’s no agreed upon standard or methodology yet but I agree that it’s important.

 

[Francois Caron]

Come to Arkansas

Come to Canada! It's just plain legal here!

 

[John Dirk]

Come to Canada! It's just plain legal here!

How does Canada deal with the problem of workplace use?

 

[JohnRice]

My wife and I were in Minnesota for much of last year so we had access to legal marijuana products so we bought some gummies.

We both for being around 60 have the usual aches and pains but I have trouble sleeping and chronic headaches.

In my non scientific survey I’ve concluded that the gummies help make some of our issues tolerable.

I’ve only had gummies, but they are, hands down, the best sleep aid I’ve ever tried. No side effects, just sleep. And it just takes a sliver. I’ll spend $50 and it lasts me over a year.

 

[TonyD]

We will be back in Minneapolis this summer for an extended stay again so we’ll be buying them again.

We bought a bunch to take with us back home and on the road.
Wife is a traveling nurse, she is rarely home and last year I started going with her.

The gummies we get are 5 mgs of cbd.
One is good for sleep.

From what I remember they accidentally legalized these small dose cbd products so the smoke shops are taking full advantage. These are a delta 9 small batch product.

 

[Francois Caron]

How does Canada deal with the problem of workplace use?

I believe it's now at the same level as alcohol consumption. Just use some common sense. It seems that's exactly how the public approached this. There hasn't been any signs of civil disruptions aside from having way more dispensaries than the market can handle.

 

[John Dirk]

I believe it's now at the same level as alcohol consumption. Just use some common sense. It seems that's exactly how the public approached this. There hasn't been any signs of civil disruptions aside from having way more dispensaries than the market can handle.

Interesting. I just don't see how a subjective analysis could ever hold up in court or even HR remediations. With alcohol, the person's behavior may signal concern but their status can later be verified objectively. Not so with marijuana.