Companies Mellowing Out on Hiring Pot Smokers Workplace Drugtesting May Soon be a thing of the Past
Hey guys, just have a business related current to talk about that I found kind of interesting. This morning I was reading the news and came across an article from the APNews titled "More Businesses are Mellowing Out Over Hiring Pot Smokers"
The article talks about how many companies are quietly getting rid of drug testing altogether, or at the very least eliminating Marijuana from the drugs they test for. Many companies will continue drug testing for opiates, cocaine and speed, but will no longer test for or disqualify applicants who smoke Marijuana.
This is a huge shift in hiring as for the past 30 years or so drug testing has been pretty commonplace amongst most employers.
Drug testing really started and got big back in the 80's after the Federal Government passed a law that any government contractors had to have a drug free workplace and many private companies soon followed suite and adopted that policy.
There's a few reasons why drug testing, and specifically marijuana testing is slowly fading away. Marijuana use is losing the stigma it used to have. A recent poll found 64% of Americans support Marijuana legalization. Another reason is low unemployment numbers, in a city like Denver unemployment is under 3% which is a great thing, but it also means there's not a huge available workforce for employers seeking employees so by testing for marijuana which to most probably is kind of silly, they are eliminating a large part of the workforce.
In the grand scheme of things drug testing is kind of silly, if companies really cared about impaired employees they would be better off doing impairment testing on the job rather than drug testing.
I'm curious to hear your guys stance on this issue. Is this a good thing? Drop a comment below and let me know what you think....
You can read the full article here...
https://apnews.com/7e7877c08d7e43418c08738a67bf61a4
Business Inquiries, Sponsor a Video, or Just Wanna Say What's Up...
Social
Blog RulesForRebels.Com
Steemit @RulesForRebels
Twitter @RulesForRebels
Instagram @RulesForRebels
Support the Channel with Crypto
Bitcoin
1AbsM6eUvruyRZZ9iB3cFgTRtBwCmNcgRa
Litecoin
M9xpcu43xaoksM1zKQVeHos8yxuJevC8zk
Ethereum
0x4CE3AA68e31F8Fd9B8c73AE76C40B42eB90Be5b8
NavCoin
NeyMn17BXV9SoYJGUPLyG47xRfWxRYWsz9
Steemit
@RulesForRebels
STM6hprxM2ciQa48H2fBdq9ksn8rmFGdFoTrQCz516pHS7NqVHBBq
Dash
XbRAqzqwLLk2Fkq6bUtN417UFrjNcaLyDj
ZCash
t1VgnxB76TesdUuzYs6Qpbr5kPS86cEreVy
As a employee you do represent your company to some degree even if you are off duty. I would guess there are plenty of substances aside from weed that your boss for example would not like to see come up on a test if there was one.
What if you are involved in a lethal accident at your workplace, even tho you were not influenced at the time, it would not exactly look good for either you or the company if you tested positive for a set of drugs.
@ilte you bring up a good point, but let's assume someone isn't an idiot posting pictures of themselves smoking joints on social media and isn't doing any reputational harm to the company, having to take their pee to find that out seems to me to be invasive and extreme, assuming they aren't bringing any issues into the workplace.
With that in mind where do we draw the line. How about people who participate in extreme sports, they are more likely to die and leave a vacancy at the company. How about people who don't get 8 hours a sleep each night, they aren't going to perform their best. It's a slippery slope when we start granting permissions to employers to control you outside of your 9 to 5.
It is a hard line to draw, I don't see it being particularly useful spending times and resources enforcing frequent drug tests for the majorities of lines of work. As for work related accidents, be it major or minor, a drug test will most likely be enforced by the relevant authority. At least it is here in Norway.
And is the test positive the consequence will obviously differ from the one if it was negative. Both for the company and person.
I agree, if someone's work performance isn't up to par, if they are showing up late, if they are bringing issues into the workplace I think then maybe what they do out of work becomes fair play but assuming someone's work performance is good what they do in their own time shouldn't be their employers busienss at least IMHO
This makes a lot of sense considering the legality of recreational marijuana in 9 states and medical marijuana in an additional 20. It would be difficult for companies to justify these additional testing costs with so many legal possibilities for them to have ingested marijuana.
Yeah I think were going to see that trend continue as well. I know near me Michigan has medical marijuana but has a ballet measure in November for full legalization
Yeah, I believe it should be legalized.
Its probably been 15 years since I smoked joint and got stoned. Never was really my thing.
But overall it does a hell of a lot LESS damage than alcohol does on our Society. So why should it NOT be legalized ??
Yeah oddly enough I think weed while it can make people a bit absentminded, overall I think it makes people more careful, more paranoid, more emphathetic, etc, where as I find that alcohol is more likely to change someone's behavior, make someone aggressive, make someoen make poor choices, etc.
Yea it should be just testing to see if you are actually going to work impaired. It would have effected weed smokers the most too because aren't most stimulants and stuff out of your system within 24 or 48 hours?
Very good point, its funny that the "worst" or "more harmful" drugs stay in your system less than 24 hours while weed can stay up to 6 weeks depending on your body fat
Drugs are harmful, companies must hire quality in health and professionally, @rulesforrebels.
@lauram , should we extend that to alcohol and tobacco us as well? Does it matter if marijuana is legal like alcohol?
I think so. both alcohol and marijuana harm the brain.
This brings up kind of an interesting debate. So Alcohol is legal everywhere, and Marijuana is legal recreationally in many states and as a medicine in other states. Let's say you were an employer. Do you think its right to be able to subject your employees to your values if they are engaging in a legal activity? Not saying your right or wrong its just an interesting question. Also, how far can we take that. If we allow you to not hire alcohol drinkers, what if you only want to hire vegas or vegetarians is that okay?