U.S. Navy personnel recently received surprising news as the food giant PepsiCo released a new caffeinated drink, Rockstar Unplugged. This new drink “will cause you and your Sailors to pop-positive on drug tests,” the Navy warns. What may sound like an oddity is really a symptom of a societal dysfunction that limits access to legal marijuana to millions of people because of their employment situation.
There is now a large majority of Americans who live in states where at least some marijuana—mostly medical—is legal. There are far more than 200 million Americans who live in areas where testing positive for marijuana is not proof of illegal behavior. Only 13 states, including our very own Wisconsin, are still considering medical marijuana illegal.
A failed marijuana drug test becomes meaningless in a state where recreational marijuana is legal or if the person in question was legally entitled to access their state’s medical marijuana program. In most states, employees in the private sector exist in a gray area, as employers can choose to tolerate legal marijuana use in their employees’ free time, or they can choose to fire them for it.
NORML reports that 21 states have provisions to protect employees from employment discrimination on the basis of legal marijuana use in their free time. However, the nature of at-will employment dictates that employees are, in fact, devoid of any actual protections since employers can simply lie about the reasons justifying a lay-off.
Beyond...
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