People like to say that cannabis is a weed but that’s incorrect (unless you have unwanted cannabis sprouting up in your garden). It’s an annual flowering herb. Indoor grows use lighting to simulate the seasons.
When you smoke, you smoke the flower buds. Edibles are processed. For baked goods they squeeze out the oil and make a margarine out of it so they are more processed.
It is medically and recreationally legal in Nevada. Employers can’t drug test as a precondition of employment, exceptions include federal contracts, drivers or heavy machinery operators, etc. You can also test for active impairment including worker’s compensation, you don’t have a right to smoke on your break.
I considered the issue of marijuana use and impairment, but then I realized this isn’t unique. Many OTC and prescription drugs also cause impairment, and may be medically necessary. (Hence the common “do not take while operating heavy machinery” warnings.)
If I have really awful allergies and take an antihistamine, even that could really make me loopy. I don’t see marijuana as anything special in that regard.
If you’re taking a medication that causes impairment you need to talk to someone about an ADA accommodation. You can get into hot water at work showing up impaired even if you have a prescription.
Oh absolutely. I mean, you’d need to do the same thing if you injured your wrist and couldn’t safely operate a machine either. In any case your employer should be able to accommodate you (and in all likelihood is legally required to, per ADA as you stated).
I bring it up because you wouldn’t believe how many employees don’t bring up their medication until their boss catches them sleeping or there are performance issues. I hesitate to agree that an employer should be able to accommodate an employee who wants to smoke their medical marijuana at lunch simply because of the myriads of work environments and essential job functions that such a banket statement would be irresponsible. If you have a warehouse environment, you’re unlikely to be able to accommodate an employee who sparks up a doobie at lunch.
That definitely is a possibility. My agency takes care of injured workers (among other things) and at times it can not only be difficult but impossible for an employer to accommodate the worker, and so one thing that my agency will sometimes do is help them find employment that can accommodate them. (We sometimes partner with other agencies in that effort.) I don’t know of this particular issue (medical marijuana) ever coming up in that context, but I also can’t say it couldn’t.
Humbug!
In unpleasant work like most warehouse jobs, some of your employees probably already ‘self-medicate’ at lunch.
You certainly did 40+ years ago when I worked in such a job. And there was a generational divide in it – younger workers smoked up, while older workers drank from the alcohol they kept hidden inside their cars.
A friend who was promoted to a supervisory position was even told that he shouldn’t hang out with that smoking group anymore, since he was a supervisor. (Was told that management people relaxed in the drivers’ lounge above the garage.) Supposedly to avoid issues of fraternization, but also the company couldn’t claim legally that they knew nothing about this if supervisors were a daily presence in these gatherings.
I pretty much assume most people in the restaurant industry would test positive for something. A friend of mine works in a warehouse environment and he’s told me some of the shennanigans that go on there. He did move to a new employer at another warehouse and no longer sees the same amount of shennanigans. We’d only get one or two employees a year who would show up to work inebriated and we usually detected it because of slurred speech and smell. Seriously, pot smokers seem to have forgotten just how strong the smell is.