(Newswire.net — September 19, 2014) — Mashable.com conducted the survey in partnership with SurveyMonkey, and found that 9.7 percent of Americans fessed up to smoking cannabis before showing up to the office.
The data analyzed the marijuana and prescription drug habits of 534 Americans. What’s more, nearly 81 percent said they scored their cannabis illegally, according to the survey.
But what about workers on medical marijuana?
Paralyzed in a car crash when he was 16, Brandon Coats had been using medical marijuana since 2009 to relieve the painful spasms that jolted his body. But he smoked mostly at night, and said marijuana had never hurt his performance answering customer calls for a Colorado satellite-television provider.
So when his employer, Dish Network, asked Mr. Coats to take a random drug screen, he was not surprised when the test came back positive for marijuana.
However, when he got to work the following week, his card wouldn’t open up the door. “I was fired for violating the company’s drug-free workplace rules,” he said, despite having a medical marijuana card of which he informed his bosses and told them why.
“There are a lot of people out there who need jobs, can do a good job, but in order for them to live their lives, they have to have this,” said Mr. Coats, who is 35. “A person can drink all night long, be totally hung over the next day and go to work and there’s no problem with it.”
Cannabis and the workplace seem quite linked lately.
According to separate data from Employers, a small-business insurance company, 10 percent of small businesses reported that employees showed up in 2013 under the influence of at least one controlled substance, with marijuana coming in at 5.1 percent.
The vast majority of US employers aren’t required to test for drugs. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, many state and local governments have statutes that “limit or prohibit workplace testing, unless required by state or Federal regulations for certain jobs.”
Private employers, for the most part, can test for a wide variety of substances, according to the Labor Department.
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.