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Member, Beacon International Group, Ltd.
It must be growing more challenging for employers to keep employees who enjoy marijuana from the workplace.
U.S. citizens are increasingly favoring legalizing pot and even a prominent physician’s organization is now calling for its legalization and regulation.
Yet there is continuing proof its influence at work is dangerous.
New research just confirmed what existing studies had already concluded: drivers who smoke pot within three hours of getting behind the wheel are more than twice as likely to get involved in automobile crashes.
A USA Today story on the new research, which also found that people with higher concentrations of pot in their systems face higher crash risks, is available here.
It would be plain dopey to argue that marijuana use would have a different impact when operating workplace machinery – an impact that would surely increase workers compensation claims.
Yet at the same time, the acceptance of marijuana legalization is increasing.
A just-released Gallup poll found that a record-high 50% of Americans now say pot use should be legal, up from 46% last year.
That is up from 12% of Americans who favored it in 1969 while support for marijuana legalization remained at about 25% of the U.S. population from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s.
And the California Medical Assn. just announced an official policy of recommending legalization and regulation of cannabis. More on its reasons for doing so are available here.
The CMA says it is the first statewide medical association to take such an official position and it expects more state medical associations will join it.
Fortunately for employers, courts have upheld their right to create policies supporting a drug-free workplace. But growing support for legalization and medical marijuana laws can’t be helping reduce the risk.