Sure, but that’s not what the policies are for. If/when someone gets injured on the job the policy is standardly they require you to take a drug test then. If you fail you were breaking policy and the injury is deemed your fault, thus taking all responsibility of paying you workers comp off the table. Happens every day across the U.S. (that said I believe you can fight it, as you aren’t always automatically eliminated if you fail the drug test, you will have an up hill battle though)
I worked at a factory in the rural south the year (2022) they quietly did away with marijuana testing, even for spot violations. Turns out the standard reasoning, “the insurance company says,” doesn’t really matter… they didn’t care and allowed a 9-panel to be used in all testing matters.
The unofficial reason I heard is, they go through the same workers on rotation, the good employees get hired back and forth. Drunks are chaotic, tweakers introduce drugs and are chaotic. Stoners are quiet and show up on time, and cause 0% of the fights, and tend to come with less of a rap sheet for terroristic threats and domestics.
They almost tripped over themselves to look the other way on my stonership…
Yeah I remember when my factory hired a young woman to head HR shortly after weed was legalized where I lived and she immediately got to ensuring we wouldn’t be punished for smoking. The stoners are rarely a problem, and you really don’t want to lose a bunch of people just because their mild drug of choice is fat soluble instead of water soluble
It does amuse me how I’ve had doctors and employers drug test me which only pushed me from weed to acid
I live in a state with recreational marijuana, but my current employer’s policies specifically prohibit even medical marijuana, and I had to do a pre-employment drug test. Looking for a better job, but I’ve exhausted unemployment and all my savings, so it pays the bills for now.
Is that not protected under anti-disability discrimination legislation in the US?
I’m on medical cannabis in the UK, while our system is not set up for it at all if an employer took umbrage with it for a non-operational reason (such as operating heavy machinery vs being on it at all) that’d be a fairly open and shut disability discrimination case. Same as if you fired an employee for being on tramadol or similar.
Yeah, federally it’s classified as “no medicinal benefits with high potential for abuse”, aka schedule 1. This is why I can sue (or even get the government to sue on my behalf) an employer for firing me when my prescribed amphetamines trip a drug test, but the government can mandate employers that work with it to fire anyone who fails a cannabis test regardless of prescription status.
Biden was in the process of rescheduling cannabis, and honestly I’ve got issues with the whole scheduling system considering that it says cannabis and acid are worse than heroin and forces opiates and adhd meds into the same regulatory box despite abuse of them looking more like proper use of the other.
Christ, how does that work with your doctors being way more keen to prescribe narcotics than ours then? Is it literally a case of follow your doctor’s orders or your boss’s? That’s fucked up.
Side note update for you, thanks to the Sacklers and the hell on earth they visited on us via profiteering lying about the opiates they invented, now there’s actually a gigantic back swing and it’s WAY more difficult to be prescribed strong pain relief, even when badly needed. Count on us to always come up with the worst possible response to a problem, I guess.
It gets worse. There was nothing done for the people whose doctors told them these drugs were safe and non addicting and totally fine to take for their ankle sprain or whatever (slight exaggeration, maybe, but truly slight).
They experienced the same sudden guillotine chop of subscription willingness with no support, mid-addiction.
So yeah all those people the Sacklers got rich by lying to and addicting, they’re just dead now or homeless and on their way there. Damn near to a rule, cuz opiate addiction often can’t be beat at all, and almost never without real support.
It’s grim. But the dead and ruined, their voices don’t rise to anywhere that people with decision-making power can hear. And that’s how our country works, in a nutshell - if you mistreat people a bit, they complain. If you mistreat people all the way, though, they die and go otherwise silent. Forget leopards and their face buffet, we live in a full-on meat grinder.
I mean, that’s pretty similar to how it already operated in Australia. I’ve been prescribed oxycodone only as a post-operative painkiller (dry socket after wisdom tooth removal and sinus surgery) and was given fentanyl immediately post-surgery for my sinus surgery, but since they moved codeine from being behind-the-counter to prescription-only (2018), those are the only times I’ve ever been able to access opiates/opioids in my life, despite presenting with debilitating migraines since I was 11 years old.
At my age, with the knowledge I have now, would I want them for migraines? Hell, no. I don’t want to risk addiction for temporary pain relief. Would I willingly prevent people who experience chronic pain from opiates or opioids? Probably not, but I’m not a doctor.
As is often the case in the US, without someone chiming in with a bunch of specifics, it’s hard to understand the scope of what I mean as being as dark as it is. We institutionally went from “no pain is allowed in patients, load em up!” to “patients can fucking deal with it, it probably doesn’t even hurt that much”, overnight, we didn’t land at any semblance of a sane middle ground. Hopefully the pendulum swings will behave like a real pendulum and settle lower and lower, but woof, it’s bad out there.
Prescribed narcotics would be OK as long as related doctor or company restrictions on operating heavy equipment or such were complied with. But in the US marijuana is still federally illegal. The feds usually don’t seek out prosecutions where states have legalized at the state level, but banks won’t accept business accounts if marijuana is sold because of the federal illegality, and businesses involving heavy machinery generally also still feel the legal risk of explicitly allowing marijuana use is too high.
Ah fair forgot it was still illegal at a federal level. Our situation is different as we’re a unitary state with limited devolution, it’s still a class B drug here criminally speaking but they moved it into a lighter schedule in other legislation so it could be prescribed like morphine, tramadol, that sort of thing for medical purposes. Recreationally, there’s no political courage for legalisation nor much moral authority for harsh prohibition either so the can gets kicked another generation.
Does that mean US recreational weed businesses are still largely cash based?
It depends. I’ve been to places I can use my card, but I also have been to ones with an ATM where you have to pay cash. The bigger issues are for stuff like payroll and business expenses as well as business loans.
Fundamentally, I suspect cannabis will wind up in the domain of our Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms within a decade or two. I hope we can get psychadelics in there too. The process of federally changing its status is ongoing, starting under our previous president.
Doesn’t make it OK to be high at a job where that impairment puts you and others in danger.
That being said, there’s no test for THC that has a narrow enough time window to tell if someone is currently intoxicated. Blood tests are the closest at 6h, but blood levels aren’t correlated with intoxication.
Sure, but that’s not what the policies are for. If/when someone gets injured on the job the policy is standardly they require you to take a drug test then. If you fail you were breaking policy and the injury is deemed your fault, thus taking all responsibility of paying you workers comp off the table. Happens every day across the U.S. (that said I believe you can fight it, as you aren’t always automatically eliminated if you fail the drug test, you will have an up hill battle though)
I worked at a factory in the rural south the year (2022) they quietly did away with marijuana testing, even for spot violations. Turns out the standard reasoning, “the insurance company says,” doesn’t really matter… they didn’t care and allowed a 9-panel to be used in all testing matters.
The unofficial reason I heard is, they go through the same workers on rotation, the good employees get hired back and forth. Drunks are chaotic, tweakers introduce drugs and are chaotic. Stoners are quiet and show up on time, and cause 0% of the fights, and tend to come with less of a rap sheet for terroristic threats and domestics.
They almost tripped over themselves to look the other way on my stonership…
Yeah I remember when my factory hired a young woman to head HR shortly after weed was legalized where I lived and she immediately got to ensuring we wouldn’t be punished for smoking. The stoners are rarely a problem, and you really don’t want to lose a bunch of people just because their mild drug of choice is fat soluble instead of water soluble
It does amuse me how I’ve had doctors and employers drug test me which only pushed me from weed to acid
For weed, get a medical card, if you can afford it. Usually even in recreational states you can get one and then they can’t fire ypu for it.
I live in a state with recreational marijuana, but my current employer’s policies specifically prohibit even medical marijuana, and I had to do a pre-employment drug test. Looking for a better job, but I’ve exhausted unemployment and all my savings, so it pays the bills for now.
Is that not protected under anti-disability discrimination legislation in the US?
I’m on medical cannabis in the UK, while our system is not set up for it at all if an employer took umbrage with it for a non-operational reason (such as operating heavy machinery vs being on it at all) that’d be a fairly open and shut disability discrimination case. Same as if you fired an employee for being on tramadol or similar.
Weed is only legalized by states here, it’s still federally illegal
Yeah, federally it’s classified as “no medicinal benefits with high potential for abuse”, aka schedule 1. This is why I can sue (or even get the government to sue on my behalf) an employer for firing me when my prescribed amphetamines trip a drug test, but the government can mandate employers that work with it to fire anyone who fails a cannabis test regardless of prescription status.
Biden was in the process of rescheduling cannabis, and honestly I’ve got issues with the whole scheduling system considering that it says cannabis and acid are worse than heroin and forces opiates and adhd meds into the same regulatory box despite abuse of them looking more like proper use of the other.
Absolutely not protected in the US. They can and will fire you.
Christ, how does that work with your doctors being way more keen to prescribe narcotics than ours then? Is it literally a case of follow your doctor’s orders or your boss’s? That’s fucked up.
Side note update for you, thanks to the Sacklers and the hell on earth they visited on us via profiteering lying about the opiates they invented, now there’s actually a gigantic back swing and it’s WAY more difficult to be prescribed strong pain relief, even when badly needed. Count on us to always come up with the worst possible response to a problem, I guess.
Fucking hell, that’s brutal.
It gets worse. There was nothing done for the people whose doctors told them these drugs were safe and non addicting and totally fine to take for their ankle sprain or whatever (slight exaggeration, maybe, but truly slight).
They experienced the same sudden guillotine chop of subscription willingness with no support, mid-addiction.
So yeah all those people the Sacklers got rich by lying to and addicting, they’re just dead now or homeless and on their way there. Damn near to a rule, cuz opiate addiction often can’t be beat at all, and almost never without real support.
It’s grim. But the dead and ruined, their voices don’t rise to anywhere that people with decision-making power can hear. And that’s how our country works, in a nutshell - if you mistreat people a bit, they complain. If you mistreat people all the way, though, they die and go otherwise silent. Forget leopards and their face buffet, we live in a full-on meat grinder.
I mean, that’s pretty similar to how it already operated in Australia. I’ve been prescribed oxycodone only as a post-operative painkiller (dry socket after wisdom tooth removal and sinus surgery) and was given fentanyl immediately post-surgery for my sinus surgery, but since they moved codeine from being behind-the-counter to prescription-only (2018), those are the only times I’ve ever been able to access opiates/opioids in my life, despite presenting with debilitating migraines since I was 11 years old.
At my age, with the knowledge I have now, would I want them for migraines? Hell, no. I don’t want to risk addiction for temporary pain relief. Would I willingly prevent people who experience chronic pain from opiates or opioids? Probably not, but I’m not a doctor.
As is often the case in the US, without someone chiming in with a bunch of specifics, it’s hard to understand the scope of what I mean as being as dark as it is. We institutionally went from “no pain is allowed in patients, load em up!” to “patients can fucking deal with it, it probably doesn’t even hurt that much”, overnight, we didn’t land at any semblance of a sane middle ground. Hopefully the pendulum swings will behave like a real pendulum and settle lower and lower, but woof, it’s bad out there.
Prescribed narcotics would be OK as long as related doctor or company restrictions on operating heavy equipment or such were complied with. But in the US marijuana is still federally illegal. The feds usually don’t seek out prosecutions where states have legalized at the state level, but banks won’t accept business accounts if marijuana is sold because of the federal illegality, and businesses involving heavy machinery generally also still feel the legal risk of explicitly allowing marijuana use is too high.
Ah fair forgot it was still illegal at a federal level. Our situation is different as we’re a unitary state with limited devolution, it’s still a class B drug here criminally speaking but they moved it into a lighter schedule in other legislation so it could be prescribed like morphine, tramadol, that sort of thing for medical purposes. Recreationally, there’s no political courage for legalisation nor much moral authority for harsh prohibition either so the can gets kicked another generation.
Does that mean US recreational weed businesses are still largely cash based?
It depends. I’ve been to places I can use my card, but I also have been to ones with an ATM where you have to pay cash. The bigger issues are for stuff like payroll and business expenses as well as business loans.
Fundamentally, I suspect cannabis will wind up in the domain of our Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms within a decade or two. I hope we can get psychadelics in there too. The process of federally changing its status is ongoing, starting under our previous president.
[CITATION NEEDED.]
You can have a prescription for opiates too.
Doesn’t make it OK to be high at a job where that impairment puts you and others in danger.
That being said, there’s no test for THC that has a narrow enough time window to tell if someone is currently intoxicated. Blood tests are the closest at 6h, but blood levels aren’t correlated with intoxication.
“Drug-free workplace” policy language is also a requirement for a lot of government contracts in the US