Prescription pot does not fly at employee screenings

[ilbegone]

Prescription pot does not fly at employee screenings


December 28, 2009

By JACK KATZANEK
The Press-Enterprise

It could be the classic quandary for a company: They want to hire a new employee but the person has failed a pre-employment drug test. Then he or she produces a legally obtained prescription to use marijuana.

Despite the growth of marijuana dispensaries and the willingness of some physicians to prescribe the drug for medical reasons -- and despite the tendency for California to side with employees in workplace issues -- the law is not on the side of people who use the drug.

Riverside's first marijuana dispensary opened less than a month ago and there are about 1,000 such businesses in Los Angeles alone, so the issue could come up more often.

A 2008 decision by the California Supreme Court found that a company would be within its right to not hire someone or terminate an employee whose drug test came up positive for marijuana, even if that use did not violate state law.

That case was brought by Gary Ross, a U.S. Air Force veteran who was hired to work as a systems administrator at RagingWire Telecommunications Inc., a Sacramento company, in 2001. Several days later, his drug test revealed the active ingredient for doctor-prescribed marijuana in his system and he was fired.

Ross, who suffered from chronic back pain, sued RagingWire. He claimed he was being legally treated for a disability, which would entitle him to protection under California's Fair Employment and Housing Act, which protects people from being fired because of ailments.

According to court documents, he said neither his back pain nor the marijuana affected his ability to do his job.

"Just as it would violate the FEHA to fire an employee who uses insulin or Zoloft, it violates the statute to terminate an employee who uses a medicine deemed legal by the California electorate," Ross argued in court documents.

California's workplace rules, in areas including overtime, sexual harassment and break time, tend to favor workers over employers.

But the court ruled that marijuana, despite the 1996 voter initiative that allows its medicinal use in California, is still considered an illegal drug. The laws that cover workplace fairness do not require employers to accommodate users and the 1996 Compassionate Use Act only protects users against criminal prosecution.

"The Compassionate Use Act has to do with treatment of medical problems, but it wasn't intended to change the relationship between employers and employees," said Nate Kowalski, who practices employment law for the Cerritos-based firm Atkinson, Andelson, Loya, Ruud & Romo.

Employers generally support the state court's decision, but many agree it is an interesting dilemma.

"With our industry it's mandatory," said Valerie Liese, president of Ontario-based Jack Jones Trucking. "We have the safety of the public in our hands and I would not be able to have someone in that situation working for me."

Max Arbolida, vice president for employee relations at San Bernardino-based Arrrowhead Credit Union, has worked as a human resources official for 25 years, which includes tenures at an aerospace company and a nuclear power plant.

Arbolida said that, speaking strictly as a human resources expert, an employer has a right to expect clear-headed workers.

But Ross, the plaintiff who sued his employer in 2001, told the Supreme Court that he has continued to work in the telecommunications field and has performed satisfactorily, court documents show.

That is a point that is often left out of this debate, said Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organizations for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, because most of the drug use in question does not happen on the job, and marijuana can remain in a body's system for a month or more.

"No one wants to see employees impaired," St. Pierre said. "But a urine test doesn't measure impairment, it just measures past use."

Lanny Swerdlow, a registered nurse and medical marijuana activist who last year opened a clinic in Riverside where patients can get prescriptions, said he's not aware of any legal challenges to the ruling.

He said the only possible avenue for an appeal would be applying the federal Americans with Disabilities Act.

"That would probably take years," Swerdlow said.

[1inchgroup]

So....just playing the Devil's Advocate here....but let's say this person went along with someone else screening for the same job.

The other person popped for opiates...then produced a prescription bottle of painkillers.

Difference?

[Kathy63]

So....just playing the Devil's Advocate here....but let's say this person went along with someone else screening for the same job.

The other person popped for opiates...then produced a prescription bottle of painkillers.

Difference?

It depends on what kind of painkillers. If it was an opiatoid, no difference. The rule is against anything that would cause mental impairment. The company has a legal obligation to protect the public from its mentally impaired drivers. To require them to hire a marijuana addict or someone on mind fogging opiates would be to buy the lawsuits that the public would undoubtably bring against them in the expected accidents.

[Twoller]

"Medical marijuana" and its legal status is just more evidence of how corrupt our society has been made by the Drug War. "Medical marijuana" is just a doctor's license to get high. During the prohibition of alcohol, you could also get a medical prescription for alcohol.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6c/Prohibition_prescription_front.jpg/800px-Prohibition_prescription_front.jpg

http://cocktails.about.com/od/history/a/prohibition_2.htm

....

Another interesting provision to prohibition was that alcohol was available via a physician’s prescription. For centuries liquor had been used for medicinal purposes, in fact many of the liqueurs we know today were first developed as miracle cures for various ailments. Despite the fact that in 1916 whiskey and brandy were removed from The Pharmacopeia of the United States of America and in 1917 the American Medical Association stated that alcohol “…use in therapeutics as a tonic or stimulant or for food has no scientific value…” and voted in support of prohibition, there was still a belief in liquor's medicinal benefits among many.

Because of this established belief that liquor could cure and prevent a variety of ailments, doctors were still able to prescribe liquor to patients on a specially designed government prescription form that could be filled at any pharmacy. When medicinal whiskey stocks were low the government would increase its production. A significant amount of the prescription alcohol supplies were diverted from their intended destinations by bootleggers and corrupt individuals during prohibition.

....

Yes, businesses should reserve the right to restrict employees away from being under the influence of mind altering substances like pot and alcohol. But, would this company fire an employee for testing positive for pot if it were legal or decriminalized? Would they even be looking for it? Probably not.

[1inchgroup]

Not sure I want to come off as Mr MedPot....that's not my intention....but I do know a few people of both types.

Ones that benefit greatly from medical pot. Know how your arm or leg feels when it is waking up after you've put it to sleep? That buzzy...tingly...really uncomfortable feeling. Imagine if that was on an entire side of your body...and it wasn't tingly and uncomfortable. It hurts. It never goes away. Day in....day out. PAIN. I watched someone try eating a bit for the first time...and I also saw her relax for the first 4 hour block of time in years. Volunteered at a center in West Hollywood for a while...and there are some seriously sick people going to these places.

...and I know a few that go to score for them and their friends.

None of them hurt anyone...I don't see a problem with it. Going to work intoxicated is another arguement. That's never a good plan...

But you can pop positive for pot up to a month after a single use. How is a urine test proof that person is under the influence? Speed freaks can tweek away a 3 day weekend, and they're clean days afterwards.

The entire THC testing concept is faulty...and an invasion of privacy with no "true" proof at the end.

[Ayatollahgondola]

I smell the stuff on the users. It gets in their clothes, on their breath, etc. They can't function generally, so it's usually apparent.
If I put the two together while they were on the job, I sent them home. happened twice in a month, I gave them 30 days off no pay to get straight. If it became a ritual they were fired.
Drug use on the job injures those around them, and from experience, it cost me in damages. My trucks, tools, landlords buildings, you name it.
If you're so sick that you need cannabis, it's probably best you take up disability

[1inchgroup]

Surprised you'd give em a chance. I'd fire someone that came to work jacked up...first time.

It's the law here in California...and I'd imagine it's going to be decriminalized from the conversations going on. I'd think an employer would have no choice but to comply with it. May take a lawsuit to prove, but it's prescribed by a doctor. There's no difference between medmar and painkillers or antibiotics. Employer should have no say in the matter...unless said person attends work jacked up.

[ilbegone]

I've seen it both ways.

Those who couldn't function after a couple of hits and others who were good help even if smoking pot all day, and the world of cannabis use goes way beyond the flagrantly obvious.

Regardless of age bracket or apparent life style.

Everyone is different.

I am now of the opinion that no one should be high on the job, but that whatever partying a person does on his own time is his own business. It's going away, but there was the old time blue collar notion which involved lots of drinking (thirty years ago there as as much chance of the water cooler being filled with beer as with water) and by extension pot smoking both on and off the job.

The drug tests are a farce. It's been some time now, but I could party like a fiend the night before a pee test and I beat them all.

I don't do it any more for several reasons, not the least that under the present situation the marijuana trade fuels a lot of killing - essentially it's a blood soaked product whose traffickers have no respect for life or environment.

I believe that if it were legal to grow and posses for personal use but greatly illegal to traffic it would take much of the profit away from the cartels.

The other idea of allowing cannabis to be sold over the counter and taxed is nuts as far as I'm concerned. The same killers who move it now will just get a business license and be rewarded for their previous behavior - not unlike awarding amnesty to illegals who have thumbed their noses at our sovereignty.

Quite a few in our society have a notion that harsh punishment or "rehabilitation" will make pot use go away. I think that sort of wishful attempt is something like pissing into a fan, it's useless denial of reality.

[1inchgroup]

And those are the clubs that are being shut down in LA right now. It goes in cycles. The smugglers and the public lands growers all show up eventually. The LEGAL places don't give you cash for your bag of weed. They'll credit your account with the amount you dropped off...if you had too much to smoke all on your own or just harvested or whatever. When you were dry, you went and tapped the account for a little. If you didn't grow, you were able to tap the resources of those that did, and donate a little something for their efforts. They are collectives....hippy shit.

I did my work with them in the late 90's...with Scott Imler and the original crew that got prop 215 passed. Quite a few of those guys died in jail for their activism...they weren't looking for an angle. They were looking for relief from 1990's AIDS symptoms.

[Kathy63]

Scott Imler was greatly disappointed in the way 215 turned out. If he had known, he most likely wouldn't have done it at all.

http://reflectionsonplayboy.com/2007/10/rev-scott-imler-medical-marijuana.html

“It’s just ridiculous the amount of money that’s going through these cannabis clubs. It’s absolutely ridiculous,” says Scott Imler, a minister in the United Methodist Church who has long been active in promoting medical marijuana.

Eleven years ago, he was working to pass proposition 215, the [statewide] ballot measure that legalized it. Today, Imler has second thoughts.

“The purpose of proposition 215 was not to create a new industry. It was to protect legitimate patients from criminal prosecution,” Imler says.

The aim back then, reflected in television spots, was for a highly regulated system in which licensed pharmacies would dispense medical marijuana to the seriously ill. Proposition 215’s backers had people with AIDS, cancer, and glaucoma in mind.

“What happened when we were writing it was, as you can imagine, every patient group in the state and they all have their lobbies. You know, the kidney patients and the heart patient. Every patient group wanted to be included in the list,” Imler recalls. “And so we didn’t wanna get in the position of deciding what it could be used for and what it couldn’t be used for. We weren’t doctors. We weren’t scientists. We weren’t researchers. We were just patients with a problem.”

Imler says they were forced to make the proposition vague.

So the law voters passed mentioned not only cancer and AIDS but “...any other illness for which marijuana provides relief.” A decade later, if you’ve got a note from a doctor, you can buy medical pot for just about any imaginable condition.

“Let me just ask you plain and simple. Is there this proliferation because people are simply using, quote, unquote, medical marijuana, to get high?” Safer asks.

“I think there’s a lot of that. And I think you know, a lot of what we have now is basically pot dealers in storefronts,” Imler says.

Many businesses calling themselves dispensaries or cannabis clubs advertise in alternative papers, as do doctors around the state who will give you a quick once-over and, for a price, a permit to buy.

[Twoller]

If Imler had focused on decriminalization instead of "medical marijuana", there would be no dispensaries today. Nobody would need them.

People who like to smoke pot get sick or injured just like everybody else. When they get medical problems and somebody asks them if they smoke pot to relieve their medical symptoms, what are they going to say? If somebody offers them relief from law enforcement because their pot smoking is now "medical", what are they going to do? If it easy enough, what are the rest of the pot smokers going to do?

Unfortunately, not everybody who likes to smoke pot has medical symptoms and not all of the rest has the income to get some doctor's bogus prescription. They go to jail ... when they get caught.

And meanwhile the black market prices stay obscenely high. $50 a gram? Imagine if oregano were $50 a gram. You would have to spend $100 for a pizza.

[1inchgroup]

You'll get no argument from me about that...there are tons of places that buy mexican weed and sell it to patients. They'll be shut down eventually. The real ones though...are patronized by actual patients, the screening is a little tighter than the dealer shops. If a club refers you to "their" doctor, walk away as fast as you can.

Even with that going on though...if someone has a medical "get out of jail free" card...and there's nothing shady going on... an employer shouldn't be able to discriminate.

The prices are reflected in the legit places as well....can't exactly sell a product that's superior to the black market at cheaper prices...or you become the black market.

[Twoller]

You'll get no argument from me about that...there are tons of places that buy mexican weed and sell it to patients. They'll be shut down eventually. The real ones though...are patronized by actual patients, the screening is a little tighter than the dealer shops. If a club refers you to "their" doctor, walk away as fast as you can.

Even with that going on though...if someone has a medical "get out of jail free" card...and there's nothing shady going on... an employer shouldn't be able to discriminate.

The prices are reflected in the legit places as well....can't exactly sell a product that's superior to the black market at cheaper prices...or you become the black market.

Oh please. The "real" dispensaries versus the "other" places that sell that pokie old "Mexican" weed? Without the black market, there would be no "medical marijuana" dispensaries. There is no such thing as "legitimate" medical dispensaries. They are all there to cater to people masquerading as somebody who "needs" to smoke pot. All of them. If this stuff is legalized for personal possession, the medical dispensaries are doomed. They will evaporate overnight.

[1inchgroup]

Sure there is...the legit ones have members signed up. Each one of those members is allowed to grow X number of plants for personal use, under prop 215. Signing up as a collective member allows you to get your X number of plants grown for you by another member of the collective. If you grow too, you swap harvests with everyone in the collective.

They don't buy weed off the street to stock the shelves....and they price what they grow at black market levels. That discourages members from getting smoke for their friends.

Really...there are legit places, that operate with legit members. I could introduce you to a handful of people that would change your mind. Don't really understand why people get all butthurt over medical pot...half the population is whacked out on prozack or zoolift or suuperdooperdeluxemoodenhancer11023....and they're whacked out 24-7.

[Twoller]

Somebody, in every "medical marijuana" dispensary that collects black market prices, is being paid in black market prices. If they were to legalize personal possession of cannabis, the dispensaries would disappear and so would the black market prices. "Medical marijuana" is a fake front against the Drug War, used to protect the black market. This is how corrupt our country has become in the face of the Drug War.

[1inchgroup]

(devil's advocate, remember?)

There are actually some members that are members for reasons of safety. They want a safe place to go, and not have to deal with "them". Along with the safety issue of dealing with "them"....there's the stigma that goes along with it... So they'd want to avoid that as well. Then there's the issue of product safety. Since most of the people that would be concerned are seriously ill....they are concerned about mold (the kind of mold that grows on pot can cause serious lung infections), pesticides, preservatives....

I know it's hard to believe, but there are very good reasons behind the law. The fact that a lot of others have taken advantage of it shouldn't lessen the impact this has on people's lives.

Is it just because they're smoking pot? Is that what it comes down to?

[Jeanfromfillmore]

As a product of the 60's I've had my experience with many things. And guess what, I came out ok. At least I think so. But don't ask my X. What does he know anyway.

I wouldn't bother me if they legalized pot. All it does is make you act dumb and get the munchies. Plenty of people just walk away from it after they outgrow it. But if I had terminal cancer, I'd probably what the choice of having it.

[Twoller]

The drug of choice for cancer patients is morphine, not cannabis. "Medical marijuana" is a scam perpetuated by organized crime and idle consumers too stupid/stoned/rich to do anything about it.

[Jeanfromfillmore]

The drug of choice for cancer patients is morphine, not cannabis. "Medical marijuana" is a scam perpetuated by organized crime and idle consumers too stupid/stoned/rich to do anything about it.Cemo causes you to lose your appetite, which pot enhances. It's not used for the pain, it's used for the side affects of cemo and morphine which also causes you to lose your appetite.