I wonder how the drug testing at work relates to individual rights of privacy enshrined in the constitution, if one is testing for employees that smoked on the weekend, on monday..that is pretty ethically wrong and if you are testing using a methodology for employees stoned on monday and also catching ones that got stoned in their own time on the weekend, one is not even considering the ethical implications of that which in itself has legal implications.
This is now a brave new world, where my rights have now for the first time have got to be respected..Many will now struggle to get their heads around that but hey, their problem not mine as said before.. Employers will now have to implement an ethical means of work place drug testing. And I think that it is just and fair on the stoners who have been victimised (illegally) for far too long. Now they can sue you. Boom. The weekend being their private time and all? The laws that have been recognized in this judgement have been in place since '96. The employers, government, police etc.. have been acting illegally since '96 let me remind you, the judgement is just a recognition of that. If my personal stash gets confiscated now, I can lay charges of theft with the police and they have to investigate..hows that?! LOL
It is time to get ones head around one does not have ownership over another adults body or mind? In an employee situation, one is renting their time and their skills for the time when they are working and nothing more than that..
On the note of workplace safetly, some of the biggest party animals I have known have been the PILOTS! LOL They just tended to drink beer, lots and lots of it as it passed through the system quick enough if they kept the tolerance high enough. A very dangerous workaround to the current failed workplace drug testing policies. In addition they had a penchant for novel and powerful psychedelics which would not be picked up on any test and most anyway were so close to existing brain chemicals that they could not be picked up as an anomaly if one tried with the best technology. There will always be a way to beat a test. In the old days of the tour da france, when it was legal, the hill climbers hearts used to explode (it happened hence making sport doping illegal) after eating 200 amphetamine tablets on the way up the hill..Now that it is all illegal (rightly so in sport competition), to think cheating does not happen would be foolish. Now it is all off season doping with doctors (it happens, I have known olympic athletes and was told most dope or they can't compete at the top in such a short carreer) and now with blood transfusions and lithium polymer batteries inside the bicycle tubes and hub based secret motors it just gets creative! Humans will always find a way to get around the accepted norm and push the boundary, it is in our nature. It is as human as getting pissed or having another human.
But ja michael the flip side of your point, is what when employers realize that a large percentage of employees were actually getting stoned all along and everyone was unaware until now, that we are looking. And then what when the labour pools dry up as stoners are excluded, and then the employers and industry are forced to accept them and give up on testing for most applications?
That has already happened in the states. The trend was noticed in 2013/4 as far as I know and up to today, the stoners can all get employed now in most industries (where safety is not paramount). In fact also the legal cannabis industry itself, in the states, now employs more people than the dental industry. California is the one state that never had a recession and has one of the biggest and most vibrant industries of any place on the planet, it also has one of the highest per capita cannabis consumption levels. Food for thought.
Notice below the emphasis on "workplace safety" , but also "respecting the law". In our case the law was not signed into force yesterday, it was signed into force in '96. Yesterday the highest court of the land recognized that the law was not being adhered to and demanded that it was.
https://www.cnbc.com/2014/09/17/marijuana-nearly-10-percent-of-americans-go-to-work-high-survey.html
" Smaller businesses, meanwhile, with limited resources to test employees are in the early stages of figuring out next steps. Even in places like Colorado where recreational cannabis use is legal, employers are trying to strike a balance between respecting the law and establishing clear workplace rules.
Christopher Myers, co-founder of BodeTree, a 15-employee start-up based in Denver, says he has yet to create a policy strictly for marijuana use in the workplace.
As an online service that helps small businesses manage and understand their finances, BodeTree has to comply with financial institutions' policies for protecting client data. Myers said there's a zero tolerance policy when it comes to substance use on the job.
"It's an interesting balance, because we need a policy that is compliant with federal and state law," he said. "And we are respectful of those laws. But we don't want someone showing up to work drunk, on Vicodin or high on marijuana."
For now, Myers isn't performing spot testing for marijuana consumption on employees.
"The testing technology in Denver will detect if you have been using marijuana in the past 30 days," he said. "From a policy point of view, no one knows how to handle it."
More drug testing?
Curtis Graves, staff attorney at Mountain States Employers Council in Colorado, says there has been somewhat of a spike in employer drug testing since pot was legalized in 2013, but this is a nationwide trend.
"In Colorado, there was interest in having new drug policies, and adding language to existing policies so that workers know regardless of legalization, they can't use on or off duty at work," Graves said.
If workers test positive in Colorado, while on duty at work, they can be terminated for cause, Graves said.
For now, Myers of BodeTree says he hasn't had any issues with on-site marijuana usage, and hasn't decided yet if he will be changing his policy.
"We are keenly observing the landscape right now—it will be an interesting couple of years across the country, if you look state-by-state, the momentum is toward legalization right now. It's inevitable, so just like with any human resources issue or company policy, it's never cut and dry," Myers says. "It will take employers time to figure out the right path."
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/careers/employment-trends/2018/05/03/labor-shortage-businesses-mellow-over-hiring-pot-smokers/573710002/
"Twenty-nine states and Washington D.C, have legalized the use of medical marijuana and on top of that, nine states have legalized recreational pot. But the question is, why was it illegal in the first place?"
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-05/the-coming-decline-of-the-employment-drug-test
"Employers are struggling to hire workers in the tightening U.S. job market. Marijuana is now legal in nine states and Washington, D.C., meaning more than one in five American adults can eat, drink, smoke or vape as they please. The result is the slow decline of pre-employment drug tests, which for decades had been a requirement for new recruits in industries ranging from manufacturing to finance.
As of the beginning of 2018, Excellence Health Inc., a Las Vegas-based health care company with around 6,000 employees, no longer drug tests people coming to work for the pharmaceutical side of the business. The company stopped testing for marijuana two years ago. “We don’t care what people do in their free time,†said Liam Meyer, a company spokesperson. “We want to help these people, instead of saying: ‘Hey, you can’t work for us because you used a substance,’†he added. The company also added a hotline for any workers who might be struggling with drug use.
Last month, AutoNation Inc., the largest U.S. auto dealer, announced it would no longer refuse job applicants who tested positive for weed. The Denver Post, owned by Digital First Media, ended pre-employment drug testing for all non-safety sensitive positions in September 2016. "
So you have to adapt as an employer. The same way the smokers have had to adapt to UNLAWFUL persecution for the last 22 years here in SA.
Gotta love it. Justice has been served.
