Marijuana: Legal Doesn’t Mean Safe
The spate of recently implemented recreational marijuana laws has left employers feeling dazed and confused when it comes to testing, but they have options — and an obligation — to ensure workplace safety.
- By David Kopf
- May 01, 2024
There’s a time-worn expression, “Just because you can, that doesn’t mean you should,” that applies perfectly to the current status of marijuana laws and workplace safety. Currently, cannabis is legal for recreational use in 24 U.S. states, essentially half the union, but marijuana’s newly acquired legal status has created confusion about what that means in terms of ensuring workplace safety.
Let’s start with some basics. Marijuana and work don’t mix, especially when it comes to occupational safety.
“Very simply, the legalization of marijuana is creating a lot of confusion among employers and even drug testing providers,” explains Bill Current, the president and founder of Current Consulting Group, which provides drug testing consulting. “It’s creating this false assumption that marijuana because it’s now legal in so many states, is a safe drug.”
That assumption could not be further from the truth. People trying to perform safety-sensitive tasks, such as operating machinery or handling dangerous materials, under the influence of cannabis are less safe, if not downright dangerous. Unlike alcohol, there is no standard measure for impairment, but cannabis’s potential for impaired judgment, attention, memory, and motor coordination raises valid concerns for workplace safety, particularly in industries where these cognitive and physical abilities are crucial for the safety of all employees.
A February article from JAMA Health Forum reports an association between recreational marijuana laws and workplace injuries among younger workers. Using workplace injury data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses, JAMA Health Forum’s study showed that states with laws that allow recreational marijuana sales were associated with a 10 percent increase in workplace injuries among individuals aged 20 to 34 years.
“People under the influence of marijuana, trying to perform safety-sensitive functions are just as dangerous as they’ve ever been,” Current says. “It’s not as if somehow people under the influence of marijuana became better at performing their jobs just because the drugs have been legalized.
“And I think, because of all of that, employers still have probably a right, and I think they have an obligation to continue to test for marijuana to ensure that their workplaces are as safe as possible,” he adds.
This article originally appeared in the April/May 2024 issue of Occupational Health & Safety.