How crazy is this? The Oregon supreme court has ruled that medical marijuana patients who fail drug tests may be fired for failing the drug test for the drug to which they have been prescribed.
Even though they are not under the influence during work hours. Which is relevant because it is basically a workplace safety issue. What makes this insult to actual injury is that the only legal drug for medical affliction is toxic, debilitating, and sufficiently impairing as to make the worker unsafe to work, whereas the medical marijuana treats his ailment at night while leaving him alert and unaltered for his dangerous work (in a lumbermill) during the day. The drug test in question checks for metabolites remaining in the system for four weeks, and has no test for checking if the active drug is actively in the system at the time of testing (or any other time for that matter).
Another point of the case turned on the judges' appraisal of his level of disability, and their opinion seems devoid of common sense. Pam over at Pam's House Blend has clarified the legalese nicely: If you use medical marijuana to treat a condition so you may be unimpaired enough to work, an employer may fire you if you fail a workplace drug test -- because if you're healthy enough to work, you're not disabled enough to protect from firing.
Read her report here.
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