Medical Cannabis Patients Lack Workplace Protections

Editor’s note: This commentary is provided by the Medical Marijuana Education and Research Initiative (MMERI) of Florida A&M University.

There is no gray area in Florida when it comes to medical marijuana patients’ rights for protection in the workplace. They have none.

Regardless of the medical benefit to an employee, an employee may be at risk of loss of employment. For example, although the use of medical marijuana for chronic pain improves an employee’s ability to do their job, an employer with a strict drug-free workplace rule may have no choice but to terminate that worker for violating company policy.

“Specifically, laws adopted by the Florida legislature to implement the 2016 constitutional amendment approved by 71% of Florida voters make it clear that there’s no cause of action against an employer for wrongful discharge or discrimination,” explains Mr. Weisberg. The law “doesn’t require an employer to accommodate the medical use of marijuana in any fashion.”

This uncompromising legal position on cannabis use can put medical marijuana patients in uncertain situations with some employers, particularly those receiving federal funding.

Human resources (HR) consultant Trisha Zulic is the CEO of Efficient Edge HR & Training Service in San Diego. She says employment biases against cannabis are a barrier to acquiring and retaining talent and advises employers to stop testing for it.

“As an HR professional, I tell other HR professionals to drop [cannabis] from your [drug testing] panel because the test doesn’t tell you if the person can perform the job,” says Ms. Zulic.

Weisberg, the EEOC lawyer, says he believes employers’ restrictive policies on marijuana will “fade away” out of necessity. He attributes this view to multiple factors, including increased societal acceptance of medical marijuana and that employees using recreational cannabis while they are visiting states where it is legal may “come back to Florida, and two weeks, three weeks later they’re drug tested, and it still might be positive. So, I think that looking at them as lawbreakers is really becoming an obsolete way to even look at the issue.”

Visit https://bit.ly/CannabisInWorkplace to watch MMERI’s Conversations on Cannabis Virtual Forum featuring Trisha Zulic, Lanett Austin and Robert Weisberg discuss cannabis in the workplace. For more information on medical marijuana and to sign up for the MMERI newsletter, go to http://mmeri.famu.edu.