Marijuana And The Workplace
It’s 2020, and businesses are continuing to struggle to find candidates in a timely manner in a low unemployment environment. Surprisingly, one of the lesser known contributing factors is the advent of marijuana legalization and the confusion it has caused. To be clear, the confusion is not only on the side of the employer, as many prospective employees who may have authorization to use marijuana medicinally are unclear about the ramifications from an employment perspective.
Here’s how this issue can be viewed from both sides of the equation:
If you are an employer, you may know all of the factors that could affect you legally when it comes to an employee using marijuana in the workplace and the Federal Laws have not changed much, if at all when it comes to a Schedule I drug. It is still considered illegal, period. However, you may be an employer who has had to use it yourself for medicinal purposes, or perhaps you’ve had a family member who has had to use it for a chronic illness such as MS. Now, the landscape gets even muddier because you may understand the benefits, yet as an employer you absolutely cannot allow its use, per your company policy. Then… you interview the perfect candidate and they fail their drug test.
As a prospective employee with a medical marijuana prescription, do you follow the laws of marijuana use (as you understand them) not realizing it could cost you a great employment opportunity? Perhaps you feel your skills are what should be important to a prospective employer, since marijuana use could be the one thing that allows you to manage the anxiety or illness you deal with regularly, thus enabling you to work effectively.
There are many schools of thought around this issue and with the laws ever-changing and usage growing, how do we reconcile that existing employer policies could actually be barriers to hiring skilled candidates? At the same time, we must always take into account the overall safety of our workplace and organization(s).
Please feel free to read more from the attached articles with differing views. This is an important issue to follow, consider, and address as an organization dealing with the changing landscape of workers today.
Marijuana and the Workplace: It's Complicated
Point of View: Rapidly changing state laws have created a haze of confusion for concerned employers
Point of View: Employers' policies should restrict marijuana use to the extent permitted by law