L<\/span>ike free speech, marijuana legalization has its limits. The First Amendment does not guarantee indemnification from the\u00a0results<\/i>\u00a0of your free speech just as no state-level legalization law guarantees you, the cannabis user, any right to employment.\u00a0In fact, quite the opposite.<\/p>\n Cannabis may be legal, but you consume it at your own risk, because in\u00a0most places in America, cannabis consumption is grounds for immediate termination from your job. State and federal drug-free workplace laws underpin this reality, and courts have upheld that these laws do allow employers the \u201cright\u201d to fire their people for smoking weed, and to deny employment solely for cannabis use.<\/p>\n In 11 states<\/a>, however, there are laws forbidding employers from firing workers solely for being medical-marijuana patients, but only two protect employees from termination if they test positive for cannabis \u2014 and that\u2019s only if they\u2019re patients.<\/p>\n In the 39 other states, including in cannabis-laden Colorado<\/a>, if you were outed publicly as a marijuana user, you stand to lose your livelihood.<\/p>\n Put another way: In a country without much of a social safety net<\/a>, and where \u201chuman rights\u201d such as housing, healthcare and food are often available only for people earning a steady income, marijuana use jeopardizes access to the tools of life.<\/p>\n There\u2019s no solution for this forthcoming for all cannabis users. However, medical marijuana users in California<\/a> might soon see legal protections, if a bill introduced this week in the California Legislature becomes law.<\/p>\n Introduced Thursday by Assemblyman Rob Bonta (D-Oakland), AB 2609\u00a0would prohibit employers from terminating workers<\/a> solely based on \u201ctheir status as medical marijuana patients\u201d or on a drug test that came back positive for marijuana.<\/p>\n If passed, AB 2609 would not stop employers from firing a worker for being impaired \u2014 a tricky situation, as there has yet to be a test created that accurately gauges marijuana impairment \u2014 and any employer receiving federal money (including any federal agency) could still have a weed-free workplace.<\/p>\n So it\u2019s limited, but it\u2019s a start, and it\u2019s better than the status quo, particularly in the context of an opiate-fueled overdose crisis striking the nation at the same time as widening economic inequality.<\/p>\n \u201cTo be discriminated against by your employer because of the type of medicine you use is both inhumane and wrong,\u201d Bonta said in a statement.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u201cIt\u2019s time to stop treating cannabis patients like second-class citizens,\u201d added Dale Gieringer, Executive Director of California NORML<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s absurd that employers let their workers use addictive prescription opiates, but not medical cannabis, given that cannabis is so much safer and often more effective for chronic pain.\u201d<\/p>\n The 11 states with some measure of protection for cannabis patients are Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.<\/p>\n Of those, New York<\/a> and Minnesota<\/a> forbid users from accessing marijuana flower, and among these, several restrict cannabis access so strictly that patients must need be seriously ill \u2014 possibly, too ill to work \u2014 to become a cannabis patient.<\/p>\n There are some glaring absences on this list: Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, Washington and California, the state that\u2019s had medical marijuana on its law books the longest. Why is this, you may well ask? There is no satisfactory answer, beyond Gieringer\u2019s observation. Marijuana users have spent generations marginalized, and they are marginalized still. Legalization hasn\u2019t fixed it, and it\u2019s far from clear that it will.<\/p>\n TELL US<\/b>, do you think employers should have the right to fire an employee for smoking weed?<\/p>\n The post Medical Marijuana Patients Can Lose Their Jobs for Smoking Cannabis<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Do you smoke weed? Congratulations, you can be legally fired for doing so. This is one of marijuana legalization\u2019s greatest blind spots, and something that a California lawmaker is working to fix. Like free speech, marijuana legalization has its limits. The First Amendment does not guarantee indemnification from the\u00a0results\u00a0of yourContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[148,50,80,702,139,81],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23581"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23581"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23582,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23581\/revisions\/23582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\nRead More: Medical Marijuana Patients Can Lose Their Jobs for Smoking Cannabis<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"