With medical marijuana being legalized in 2021 and numerous cities looking to open dispensaries, Alabama employers are reconsidering how to go about drug testing.
Most employers agree that medical patients should have access to any employment regardless of testing positive for tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).
The only argument we’ve seen from experts in employment law is concerned with jobs where safety is critical. However, even this is being brought with counter-arguments. Notably due to the fact that recruiting and keeping employees is so difficult right now.
Still, there’s no denying the difficulty in managing employees while working around legal and cultural changes brought about by medical marijuana.
As Janell Ahnert, a shareholder at global employment law firm Littler Mendelson, notes: “Employers who have good long-term employees who they don’t want to terminate, and those employees now have a medical marijuana card and have a prescription for medical marijuana and want to be accommodated.”
She continued, “Again, under Alabama law, the employer doesn’t have to, but if it’s a long-term employee who has been contributing to your company, a lot of employers want to try to find a way to accommodate.”
But what exactly does this accommodation look like?
In many regards, it may simply be allowing patients to consume medical marijuana responsibly (notably, on their own time). It may also mean updating drug tests so those that consume medical marijuana do not fail a test.
The Difficulty in Medical Cannabis and Drug Tests in Alabama
Ahnert’s firm has been working with companies located in states that have legalized either recreational or medicinal cannabis. She claims that employers don’t simply need to adapt to law changes, but also mood changes as well.
“It’s fine if an employee wants to use alcohol on the weekends or in the evenings, but they cannot come to working under the influence of alcohol,” she told WSFA. “The issue we’re seeing is a lot of our drug testing hasn’t caught up yet. And so it’s often really hard to determine if an employee is under the influence or if they just still have cannabis in their system since it stays in your system for a longer period of time than alcohol does. So those are complications for employers to work through.”
As of this time, commonly used drug tests aren’t designed to determine when the last time a person has consumed. And marijuana tends to stay in the human body for a prolonged period of time. For example, if you smoked today and quit cold turkey, you could still fail a drug test two weeks from now.
There are a number of factors that play a role in whether or not you’ll fail a test. Notably, how much marijuana you consume and how consistently you consume it.
Naturally, these are not questions we should pressure medical marijuana patients. They should have the freedom to take their medication when needed. And this is part of this reason it can be complicated to go about employment within a medically legal state.
Ahnert furthered this statement by informing Alabama employers that they should speak to an employment lawyer if they seek to change company policies.
