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Bill would protect pot users' jobs
2/22/08|Alameda Times-Star| by Josh Richman, Staff Writer

A new Assembly bill with two Bay Area co-authors seeks to protect medical-marijuana users' jobs.
AB 2279, introduced Wednesday, would prohibit employment discrimination against those who use marijuana as medicine in compliance with state law away from the workplace. It would leave intact already existing provisions barring consumption in the workplace, and would protect employers from liability by carving out an exception for safety-sensitive jobs.

Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, had vowed to introduce such a bill last month after the state Supreme Court ruled 5-2 that an employer can fire a worker solely for medical pot use outside of work.

"AB 2279 is merely an affirmation of the intent of the voters and the legislature that medical marijuana patients need not be unemployed to benefit from their medicine," Leno said in a news release issued Thursday.

The co-authors are Assemblywomen Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley; Patty Berg, D-Eureka; and Lori Saldana, D-San Diego. It's sponsored by Oakland-based Americans for Safe Access, a nonprofit which had argued for the plaintiff in the state Supreme Court case.

"Despite the ill-conceived ruling by the California Supreme Court, the intent of state legislatures has been to recognize the civil rights of patients and to offer them reasonable protections," ASA spokesman Kris Hermes said Thursday.

ASA says companies that have fired medical-pot users, threatened their jobs or denied them jobs include Cost-co, UPS, Foster Farms Dairy, DirecTV, the San Joaquin Courier, Power Auto Group and several construction firms, hospitals and trade union employers.
Similar bills have been proposed in Oregon and Hawaii.

 

Buzzby

If this passes, it'll be interesting to see how it falls out with businesses that have federal contracts requiring a "drug-free workplace". Such contracts require drug testing and the exclusion of people who test positive for marijuana. I doubt that the State of California wants to put major federal contractors out of business.

You can be sure that there will be a lot of pressure on the legislature to drop this measure from powerful commercial interests that don't want to pay the extra insurance premiums that will be inflicted on them if they can't assure their insurance providers that their employees test negative for marijuana.

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Quiet420

In the state of Maryland, if you are a non-sensitive employee of the state government and test positive for marijuana, it is not grounds for termination. In order to lawfully terminate you, they must show that you were under the influence while on duty.

"Maryland reverses the termination of a nonsensitive corrections employee that tested positive for marijuana. There was no showing she used it on the job or was impaired while on duty. Bond v. Dept. of Public Safety and Corr. Servs., 2400-03, 2005 Md. App. Lexis 29, 22 IER Cases (BNA) 551 (Md. Spec. App. 2005). [2005 FP May]"

I would imagine that if a state can get away with that, and still recieve federal funds, that buisnesses could do so as well....a drug free workplace is a drug free workplace, and what people do on their own time, within reason, is their own buisness.