Pot in the workplace? The answer is still no, but...

The Denver Post ran an editorial this morning arguing that employers have the right to require a drug-free workplace, regardless of Colorado's Amendment 20 which provides eligible sick people an affirmative defense to criminal prosecution for medical marijuana use. Increasingly courts are being asked to decide whether employees with medical marijuana cards are excluded from employers drug-free workplace rules. Thus far the courts have consistently ruled in employers favor. Eventually the Colorado Supreme Court will have to weigh in and depending on future changes to federal law the issue may ultimately be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court at some point in the future.

As with most employers today, candidates who have been offered positions with Pinnacol Assurance must take a pre-employment drug test. Marijuana is one of the substances tested for. In talking with our vendor who does our drug testing I found out that there are employers out there who, upon being told the potential employee has a medical marijuana card, are waiving the positive drug test result. This is not the case with Pinnacol.

The Post editorial implies that there are many people who have come by their medical marijuana cards fraudulently in that they are not truly sick. And clearly people in certain types of jobs such as pilots, truck and bus drivers, and operators of heavy equipment shouldn't be under the influence of a drug that may impair their reaction time. The editiorial hopes that recent changes to the way the nascent medical marijuana industry is regulated will start to weed out those abusing the system.

However, as Colorado voters intended, there will remain folks who are truly ill, and who seek relief for their symptoms by using medical marijuana. Many of these folks will be gainfully employed or seeking employment. It will be these cases where employers may have to become increasingly sensitive as they enforce their policies in the future. Can a person using medical marijuana run a cash register? Can they serve someone a meal? Can they do an infinite type of jobs that don't directly impact public safety?

I'm thankful it won't be up to me to have to make these decisions. The broader society is going to have grapple with these issues. In the Human Resources world this is something that's not going away anytime soon and we'll be watching it closely. There is a joke about Colorado weather that if you don't like it, just wait five minutes and it will change. What the forecast is for the future of medical marijuana is anyones guess!