Employers will look at employees who are doped up and performing any kind of work that invites unsafe practices. You only have to note two or three occasions, and then dismiss the guy.
Course, then you come to replacing him, and how you’d go and recruit non-smokers. If you were Howard Hughes....you’d recruit Mormons and feel pretty secure about your staff.
The job requires that you not use ________(pick a drug, or all of them).
Failing a drug test is cause for dismissal.
Put it right there on the Application.
Any job worth having in the oil patch comes with a mandatory pre-employment drug test and random checks, like it or not.
As I said to one young man, "All that stands between the 25K you make a year and a $60K job (starting) is passing a test--just not spending your money on something that keeps you from making twice as much. Your call."
Idiots. Pot is a drug. Same as alcohol...you don’t come to work stoned or drunk. You do, your fired.
Marijuana is still classified as a Schedule I controlled substance according to the DEA and Federal Law. Be that as it may, alcohol is legal but I can’t work under its influence nor can I drive under it. Your employer creates the work rules, you must abide by them.
THC (the active ingredient in pot) is not like alcohol in some critical respects.
Alcohol is fairly rapidly detoxed from the body. However, THC gravitates to fatty tissue and linger much, much longer. There can be traces in the body for long times afterwards.
Therefore, there are all sorts of liability issues e.g. when pot smokers operate machinery or in settings like hospitals.
It is NOT just a matter whether someone is smoking pot during working hours. It could be weeks or months even before high quantity users have the THC eliminated from their bodies (especially their brains). Employers beware that pot smokers can and will be a liability in the workplace.
I would think that there would be no question with regard to this. Currently, many employers have policies about drinking alcohol, being drunk during working hours is verboten. There are also rules against smoking. This shouldn’t be any different.
Personally, I'd consider any use grounds for dismissal. Just like before. I won't go out of my way to stop someone from smoking it though. That is their freedom of choice and consequence.
A stoned society is a better controlled society. Just look at what thier doing to our children and grandchildren
Companies can already refuse to hire people, and fire people, who use legal drugs....and even alcohol....so stoners should not get too overtly excited in COL and WASH if they plan to stay gainfully employed.
And, pot is one of the easiest drugs to test for
Not a problem for employers who do drug testing.
If the employee fails the test he/she should be terminated.
This is legal and fair. If you don't want to work for places that do drug tests then work some where else, or simply don't smoke pot.
People forget the infamous Maryland Amtrak wreck of 1987, which involved a stoned engineer. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1987_Maryland_train_collision
On a side note - most of the whacked-out,'druggiest' people I've ever known all were on government-approved drugs.
There are and should be limits to what an employer demands of their employees in their off duty hours.
However, that being said, while a test can determine if someone has THC in their system, unlike alcohol, it cannot determine if it is enough to cause inebriation.
The best result might be a medical prescription that indicates how much of what kind of marijuana a patient can smoke when off duty, and still be functional at work. Most prescriptions are scheduled, not “as needed”, so this isn’t too unrealistic. Doctors would use a weight table, suggest the marijuana before, during or after a meal, as well as asking the patient about their own experience, how long a high lasts for them.
“Pot may be legal”
Not it’s not. It’s still illegal under Federal law, including so-called “medical” pot.
HOW?
Employers can even prohibit employees from smoking tobacco in their off hours.
Dopers are dopes to think that their goal of demonizing tobacco and alcohol wasn’t going to bite them on the butt.