Sure, statutes here and there makes exceptions. In my state, no employer, public or private, can take adverse action against someone who smokes off the clock. 
When you read laws, you see the prejudices and thoughts of the times when they were passed and that puts them in context.
@pkbites, how are the legal authorities in Milwaukee/Wisconsin dealing with the fact that Delta 8 THC is legal in this state? We still consider it contraband in the prison system, but I doubt that extrapolates out to civilian law enforcement, or even our own COs/guards.
My state also protects employees who smoke off the clock but makes exceptions for fire fighters.
My department has only addressed it as any THC in your system is prohibited regardless of where it came from. I don’t know what other agencies have done.
I told my employees at a business I own that it does not coincide with someone selling and handling firearms to have any detectable amount of any intoxicant in their system. But I’m not real worried about it.
Isn’t it still federally illegal to own a gun and smoke weed? I know whenever I do a background check for a gun the paperwork always brings up if I have ever taken an illegal substance or something like that.
Yes, and that was sort of what I wanted to get into if this was GD. Assume I am a law abiding citizen, can the state demand that I ignore a federal felony taking place right in front of my eyes? I think that the cases are clear that the feds cannot make me enforce their law, but I think it equally clear that the state cannot require me to look the other way.
Cite?
That cite says nothing about Ford firing employees for having booze in the home.
True, Ford did support Prohibition, but that was the majority view, at least to start.
Thanks for the correction. It seems that the $5 per day wage was only available to those who Ford believed were “real Americans” and you weren’t fired for drinking booze, you just didn’t get the publicized rate of pay if he didn’t like your home life.
Not sure how employment law works out in the USA (not well?) but in Canada, the presumption is that the employer has an imbalance of power in the relationship and cannot use that to impose excessive demands on the employee. They have a duty to be fair and balanced in dealings. Of course, here that would result in significant damages if the employer abused their position - none of this “two weeks and out” stuff.
Meanwhile, I saw an article in the news that the number of cannabis stores in some places in Canada has outnumbered the number of Tim Horton’s coffee shops. But generally, I believe employers are not allowed to drug test employees.
Never? For a red state, my state has some very employee friendly drug testing laws. A company may request a drug test prior to hiring but may not conduct random drug tests after employment, except in certain regulated industries like coal mining and gas well maintenance. The thought is that a guy who is high turning a wrench on a gas well could cause sufficient damage and death to outweigh his personal privacy rights, but that is abused and there have been court cases where middle managers and engineers who sit at desks all day while working for a coal mine are randomly tested.
Our Supreme Court (which I am one good drunken weekend away from being in contempt of them) is dominated by right wingers and has headscratchingly held that such tests are valid. My very good friend is an engineer who works for coal mines and wears a jacket and tie for work and he is subject to random tests. The idea is that if he is high on the job, he could make a miscalculation that leads to damage and death. But then that subsumes everything. There is no job where a chain of high or drunken decisions couldn’t lead to bad results. Might as well drug test lawyers (Noooooooo)
Most of the replies here seem to deal with employers and what they can and can’t do. Employer policies are one thing, an actual law is another. The “Firefighters can’t smoke” in Wisconsin is the one that compares most closely to what I’m talking about. I think that’s very weird. What is the logic behind the law? Is it ever enforced? I just don’t see the thinking behind singling out one (and only one) profession and prohibiting otherwise legal conduct when not at work. On the other hand, these are the same legislators that, in the first version of the law, prohibited the police from notifying patents when junior was caught with weed or or alcohol. That’s right. Nine year old Jimmy has a bottle of Jack and a big ole doobie? The cops could not tell the parents. IIRC, to do so would be a criminal offense. How about prohibiting elected officials from using weed? I think they must have been stoned when they passed that law. Fortunately, it was amended after much outrage.
You’re going to have to educate me on this because I don’t remember such a thing. But in the 40+ years I’ve been on the job spread between 2 separate careers a zillion things have come and gone.
I agree with you that it is a bad law, but perhaps the idea is that they might have to be on the job fighting a fire for a long time and we don’t want people having nicotine fits while fighting a fire? Maybe.
Or it could be that most people who die in fires don’t burn to death but die of smoke inhalation and somebody thought it monumentally stupid for a fire fighter to voluntarily inhale smoke.
But that’s just a WAG on my part.
I’ll have to see if I can dig up the initial law that included the “no telling parents” clause. Intentionally inhaling smoke is stupid but so are a lot of other things that people do all the time but they aren’t illegal. C’mon Wisconsinites (or is it Wisconsiners?), fight my ignorance!.
We have always been required to notify parents or guardians when anyone under 18 was arrested or cited for anything. I don’t recall anytime this wasn’t true.
In fact Wisconsin 938.20 says the opposite of what you are saying.
We have the same law in Massachusetts. It is directly related to a presumptive cancer law. If a firefighter contracts cancer, it is presumed it is because of the job and the town/city/fire district is responsible for paying for medical care, wages, and benefits. If the firefighter becomes disabled or dies due to the cancer, it is considered a line of duty injury or death.
To get that recognition/benefit, the fire service had to agree that firefighters would not engage in another behavior well known for causing a variety of cancers. You want medical coverage for lung cancer (or heart disease)? Stop smoking. The end. In fact, if a Massachusetts firefighter is caught smoking, they can be fired. To my knowledge, its only happened once or twice, but it’s out there.
Are you perhaps thinking of the Adolescent Confidentiality provisions of HIPAA?
The HIPAA Privacy Rule and Adolescents
Basically saying that children can keep their parents from being informed about certain sex related treatments for STDs, terminations, and a few other situations.