 There are currently twenty-one states that have laws protecting employment rights for medical cannabis users. And five of those also protect employees rights for recreational cannabis use off work hours. There are also several cities which protect recreational use off of work hours as well, inclding New York City, Washington DC, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Baltimore, Kansas City MO, Rochester NY and Richmond VA.
Cal NORML Deputy Director Ellen Komp points out, “California, a global leader in progressive causes, still has no protections for its workers who consume cannabis. It’s high time to change that and protect California’s workers.” Hopefully that is about to change. Current state law protects employees from workplace discrimination. California measure AB 2188 would amend this law to also make it against the law for an employer to discriminate against a person in hiring, firing, or any type of discipline or penalty, based upon their use of cannabis off the job and away from the workplace. There would be some exceptions, including some jobs in building and construction or transportation. The bill also specifies that it does not preempt state or federal laws which require testing as a condition of receiving federal funding, benefits, or entering into a federal contract. The propsed bill would make employers unable to base employment decisions on urine or hair tests that detect only the inactive metabolites of THC. The bill would still allow the use of oral saliva swabbing or computer-based performance tests that are a better indicator of recent use, or impairment. The bill has previously passed through the California Assembly, the Senate Judiciary, and the Labor committee. This week it also passed the Senate Appropriations committee. A third reading of the bill took place yesterday, August 18th, and it is now headed to the Senate floor for a full vote. All legislation must be voted on before August 31st. If passed, it will then head to the Governor’s desk, where he will have until September 30th to either sign it into law, veto it, or let it pass into law without inferferrence. If it passes into legislation, that would take effect starting January 1, 2024, which will allow time for the availability of saliva tests to catch up to the expected demand. An interesting history of urine testing for cannabis was told by Dale Gieringer, the Director for the California branch of NORML. He told High Times, “This whole [urine]-testing regime is really the result of government fraud in the first place. … There was never any good evidence that [urine] testing, in particular looking for metabolites, had anything to do with public safety. …There’s never been an FDA study to show that that’s true.” Gieringer pointed out that normally it’s required to have a doubleblind controlled clinical studies to prove efficacy, and added, “That was never, ever done for urine testing. It was basically a scam by former Reagan drug officials who—after leaving the government—went into the urine-testing business, and were well-connected, in general, with the government, who sort of decided that it would be profitable to require these tests a long time ago—the late ‘80s. And so we’re just putting an end to that fraud.” We’ll keep watch on AB 2188 thru the end of the month and see what happens. Comments are closed.
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