When the 2023 General Assembly passed legislation to legalize recreational marijuana in Maryland (House Bill 556/Senate Bill 516), employers hoped that the comprehensive legislation would provide clarification for both employers and employees about the parameters of testing and the repercussions of use. Unfortunately, the bill didn’t contain any general workplace provisions for either group.

The original draft of the legislation did little to address the impact of recreational marijuana use in the workplace. Instead, it simply restated existing state policy for medicinal cannabis use which allows Maryland employers to deny employment and/ or discipline a prospective or current employee after testing positive for marijuana (assuming the test complied with the employer’s established drug testing policy).

This rehashed medicinal use language was removed from the final legislation when Attorney General Anthony Brown stated that existing drug testing laws in Maryland already provided the authority to test and respond based on their stated policy. But because of the lack of specificity regarding marijuana use, which is now legal in the state, the Maryland Chamber of Commerce said it hopes to clarify and reinforce employer drug testing authority as applied to recreational marijuana with a formal opinion from the attorney general. MSEA believes this would be very helpful to the employer community—although not law, it would be a powerful interpretation by the state’s top attorney...

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