Agency 33 client, Danielle Urban, partner at Fisher & Phillips LLP, was quoted in an article in the Christian Science Monitor December 3: “Courts, US public at odds over worker firings for ‘legal’ marijuana use.”
Daniel Wood writes:
A worker in Colorado who undergoes a random drug test is found to test positive for marijuana use, but in less than a month pot-smoking will be legal there. Can a company with a zero-tolerance policy for illegal drug use still fire that worker, or should it instead adjust its policy on employee drug use?
That’s just one of many questions that employers in both Colorado and the state of Washington are wrestling with as they adjust to new marijuana laws, which as of Jan. 1 will permit individuals to buy and possess up to an ounce of pot.
The issues to consider are legion: How much discretion do firms have over how to handle workers who smoke pot in their nonwork hours? Can some kinds of workers (officers of the law, public transit drivers, school teachers) be held to a stricter standard than others? And perhaps most germane, when does federal law, which still outlaws marijuana possession and use, trump state law?
Read more at: http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2013/1203/Courts-US-public-at-odds-over-worker-firings-for-legal-marijuana-use
