![](\"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/MMJ-Urine-testing-Ivo-1.jpg\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t supposed to happen in Vermont\u2014a bastion of green social-libertarianism that became the first state to legalize cannabis by vote of the legislature in 2018, and which has had a medical marijuana program in place since 2004.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But on January 9, Ivo Skoric from the town of Rutland was dismissed from his job at the local transportation district for testing positive for cannabis\u2014despite the fact that he\u2019s a registered medical user. And<\/em> despite the fact that his job was to\u00a0clean<\/em>\u00a0the buses, not to drive them.<\/p>\n \u201cMy job is in the garage,\u201d Skoric tells Cannabis Now<\/em>. \u201cBus maintenance. I clean them, wash them, fuel them, park them for tomorrow.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Parking within the terminal yard, in the wee hours of the morning with nobody else in sight, was the extent of Skoric\u2019s time behind the wheel. Nonetheless, the\u00a0Marble Valley Regional Transit District<\/a>\u00a0was obliged to let him go after he failed a urine test mandated by the federal\u00a0Department of Transportation<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Skoric is now fighting to get his unemployment claim recognized, but he says he won\u2019t be content with that. He wants his job back\u2014and the DoT regulations to be brought into conformity with his rights under state law.\u00a0<\/p>\n An immigrant from Croatia, Skoric fled his native land just ahead of the wars that rocked ex-Yugoslavia in the 1990s. He settled in Vermont partially because of his love of the outdoors\u2014spending time hiking, rock climbing and snowboarding. But osteoarthritic injuries contribute to Skoric\u2019s chronic pain that is relieved by cannabis. He\u2019s been enrolled in the state medical marijuana program for some 10 years. And he pledges to rouse every level of state and federal power in defense of his right to medicate and still keep his job.\u00a0<\/p>\n First, Skoric wrote US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, urging that the text of the relevant DoT regulations \u201cneeds to change.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The relevant text of DoT\u00a0Rule 49<\/a>\u00a0reads: \u201cThere can be a legitimate medical explanation only with respect to a substance that has a legitimate medical use. Use of a drug of abuse (e.g., heroin, PCP, marijuana) or any other substance\u2026that cannot be viewed as having a legitimate medical use can never be the basis for a legitimate medical explanation, even if the substance is obtained legally in a foreign country.\u201d<\/p>\n In Skoric\u2019s letter to Buttigieg, he states the following: \u201cI obtain the \u2018substance\u2019 legally in\u2026my state, and I find offensive the contentious statement that it is a \u2018drug of abuse\u2019 and that it \u2018cannot be viewed as having a legitimate medical use.\u2019 I believe it is nonsense rooted in racist prejudice and decades of political demonization with no basis in science\u2026\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIn my 42 years of smoking it responsibly and within therapeutic doses, I can report that it only lifts me up. I am a 58-year-old male with an artificial knee, artificial hip, partially torn Achilles, reconstructed shoulder, fused cervical vertebrae, chronic osteoarthritic pain and bipolar depression, who with a little help from cannabis, can miraculously do push-ups and pull-ups, snowboard, rock climb or mop and scrub 20 city buses [in one] night.\u201d<\/p>\n He added that if he had tested positive for pharmaceuticals such as Lamictal, Latuda or oxcarbazepine\u2014all of which he had been prescribed by doctors, to no avail\u2014it wouldn\u2019t have been an issue. Both his medical marijuana card and commercial driver\u2019s license were issued by the state of Vermont\u2014but holding the latter means submitting to a urine test for cannabis under federal law.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The law in question is the\u00a0Omnibus Transportation Employee Testing Act<\/a> of 1991, which mandates urine testing for all holders of commercial driver\u2019s licenses. This expanded on the Drug-free Workplace Act of 1988<\/a>, which mandates such testing for institutional employees receiving substantial federal grants or contracts. The relevant federal agencies have promulgated regulations to implement these laws.\u00a0<\/p>\n The\u00a0Implementation Guidelines for Alcohol & Drug Regulations<\/a>\u00a0of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA<\/a>, the responsible DoT agency) state that the federal regs \u201cpreempt any State or local law, rule, regulation, or order.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Skoric also filed a complaint of employment discrimination with the DoT, which states: \u201cI am discriminated against by the DoT because of the medication I use responsibly. I am a Medical Marijuana patient in the State of Vermont, which, like 36 other states (more than three-quarters of the union), recognizes the medical value in marijuana. In a functional federation I would be protected by the federal law. I am neither impaired nor lacking in performance. And my employer clearly stated that they would not terminate me, if they were not forced by the DoT rules.\u201d<\/p>\n In verbiage perhaps too frank for bureaucratic purposes, Skoric added: \u201cIt used to be that people in the US were valued for hard work. Now they are valued for their piss.\u201d<\/p>\n He received a reply saying the complaint falls \u201coutside the scope of this feedback center.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Skoric wrote to Vermont\u2019s two Senators, Peter Welch (D) and Bernie Sanders (D) to garner their support for his plight. Welch, who sits on the Senate\u00a0Transportation Committee<\/a>, replied with a hand-written letter saying that \u201cI have long supported medical marijuana. That should also include not being penalized by testing requirements that undercut its medical use.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Sanders replied, stating that while cannabis remains a Schedule I substance under federal law, he has called upon the Biden administration \u201cto re-evaluate marijuana\u2019s scheduling.\u201d Sanders added, \u201cI hope that this process will result in the descheduling of marijuana, as it has no place on the same schedule as a drug like heroin.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Skoric also filed a complaint with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC<\/a>), but the case was rejected summarily. He received an email from EEOC\u2019s Boston office stating: \u201cBecause marijuana is considered illegal under Federal law, an employer would not violate the Americans with Disabilities Act for discharging an employee who tests positive for marijuana, even if it was lawfully prescribed under state law. You should continue to pursue your complaint with the Vermont Attorney General\u2019s Office, who will make a determination as to whether your employer violated Vermont State Law.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Yet when he did so, a representative of the State Attorney General\u2019s Office wrote back saying: \u201cAs you likely know, the federal law you don\u2019t agree with is not something that we have jurisdiction over. Our office would not have jurisdiction to investigate a complaint due to the federal law in place.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cNobody has the jurisdiction, neither the state nor the feds,\u201d Skoric complains wryly to Cannabis Now<\/em>. \u201cShould I write next to the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Skoric is also fighting the bureaucracy over his claim for unemployment insurance. On March 22, after 10 weeks of deliberation, the state\u00a0Department of Labor<\/a>\u00a0disqualified his claim on the grounds that he had been dismissed for \u201cmisconduct.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Skoric is aghast at this. \u201cI say there was no misconduct,\u201d he insists. \u201cWhy do we even have medical marijuana cards in that case? I am disabled and I take medication legally prescribed in this state.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n His appeal is currently pending before an administrative law judge. Skoric is considering a class action suit against the Labor Department if the disqualification is not overturned.\u00a0<\/p>\n Approximately 10 years ago, Skoric also applied for disability insurance with the federal\u00a0Social Security Administration<\/a>. He relates: \u201cThey just put it on hold because my SGA [substantial gainful activity] was too high. Well, now it won\u2019t be! The irony, of course, is that I am perfectly capable of doing my job, and my employer knows and accepts that, but they are forced to terminate me because they are subject to federal DoT rules. I see this as a violation of state rights, and discrimination against me as a disabled individual.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n He\u2019s also considering launching a suit against the Vermont\u00a0Cannabis Control Board<\/a>. \u201cIf the state gave me the right to use cannabis medically, they have a responsibility not to make me unemployable by that decision,\u201d Skoric says.<\/p>\n Although he has for many years led a quiet life in Vermont, working a proletarian job and raising a son, Skoric is no stranger to political activism. In his youth, he was a cyber-punk dissident under Yugoslavia\u2019s old communist regime, opposing nuclear power and the like. Faced with persecution for these activities, he left for the US in 1989. Still on the outs with the ethno-nationalist regime that came to power in independent Croatia in 1991 (with many of the old communist apparatchiks merely putting on new hats), Skoric filed an asylum claim that year. He won asylum status in 1997 and moved from New York City to Rutland in 2005.\u00a0<\/p>\n Skoric has already formed an advocacy group called RACCOON<\/a> (Rational Acceptance of Curative Cannabis in Occupational Obligations Now) to fight for his new cause on the national level.<\/p>\n While acknowledging that cannabis affects everyone differently, Skoric rejects the assumptions at the root of federal policy. \u201cI simply don\u2019t understand where these myths are coming from that weed is impairing,\u201d he says. \u201cI snowboard high. How is that possible? I get energized by its relaxing and mellowing effect. And I am extremely experienced at micro-dosing. That\u2019s why they prescribed it to me. I have true medical benefits from it that doctors couldn\u2019t achieve with pills, without causing more impairing side effects.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Skoric accuses the media of complicity in perpetuating this misconception that pills are healthier and more effective than cannabis. For instance, an October 2016 crash by a motorist driving the wrong way on Interstate 89 through Vermont left five teens dead. The driver, Steven Bourgoin, ultimately\u00a0got 30 <\/a>years to life<\/a>\u00a0in prison. But the\u00a0headlines emphasized<\/a>\u00a0that he had tested positive for THC. It fell to local alternative media outlet\u00a0VT Digger<\/a>\u00a0to point out that he had also been on fentanyl and prescription sedatives.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThat was a joke here for some time,\u201d Skoric recalls. \u201cIt\u2019s quite clear THC was not the main cause of his impairment.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Skoric sees this double standard as a holdover from the ugly origins of cannabis prohibition.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cCannabis was used as a medicine until the vicious demonization of weed started during the jazz and Reefer Madness era<\/a>, primarily driven by racial prejudice,\u201d he says. \u201cThe federal law is still in the thrall of the stigma that Hoover used to terrorize the counter-culture movements of the 1960s. And despite it now being legal in 21 states, on the federal level, it gets only worse with time. We didn\u2019t have drug testing until the 1980s and the Drug-Free Workplace Act. And in the 21st century, we got the almighty Clearinghouse to prevent job hopping.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Clearinghouse<\/a>\u00a0is an online FMCSA database \u201cthat gives employers and government agencies real-time access to information about CDL [commercial drivers license] driver drug and alcohol program violations.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cSuch a law harms the livelihoods of perfectly well-performing employees,\u201d Skoric asserts. \u201cIt\u2019s essentially just a relic of a racist past. Cannabis should get off Schedule I and the DoT drug testing assay just as fast as the Robert E. Lee statues got off their pedestals.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n There are signs that Skoric\u2019s campaign may not be that quixotic.<\/p>\n After years of upholding employee firings for use of cannabis even under state medical marijuana programs, the courts are finally starting to turn around on the question. In 2018, Connecticut healthcare worker Katelin Noffsinger\u00a0won a federal discrimination suit<\/a>\u00a0against a rehab center that withdrew a job offer after she tested positive for THC, despite being an enrolled medical user.<\/p>\n In 2019, Arizona Walmart employee and card-holding medical marijuana patient Carol Whitmire fired after testing positive for cannabis,\u00a0won a wrongful termination suit<\/a> in federal court.\u00a0<\/p>\n Two years after legalizing, in 2019, Nevada became the first state\u00a0to bar employers from discriminating<\/a> against job applicants on the basis of a positive test for cannabis.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now, fifteen states\u00a0have passed laws<\/a> making it illegal for an employer to discriminate against either an employee or job applicant who uses medical marijuana as permitted by state law. Alas, Vermont is not among them.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Ivo Skoric, living off dwindling savings, is determined to become a test case in challenging what he sees as an outdated dogma still present in many states.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI vow not to let my personal tragedy go to waste,\u201d he says. \u201cI am not going to rest until I see that law gone.\u201d<\/p>\n The post Medical Cannabis User Challenges Urine-Test Regime for Workers<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t supposed to happen in Vermont\u2014a bastion of green social-libertarianism that became the first state to legalize cannabis by vote of the legislature in 2018, and which has had a medical marijuana program in place since 2004.\u00a0 But on January 9, Ivo Skoric from the town of Rutland wasContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":63871,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4053,50,13760,5054,17054,484,14775,90,65,139,4673,5783,17055,11714,3949,17056,420,27,4825],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63870"}],"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\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63870"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63870\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63872,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63870\/revisions\/63872"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Fighting the Bureaucracy\u00a0<\/strong><\/h4>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/MMJ-Urine-testing-Ivo.jpg\")
<\/a>Files of Complaint<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Unemployment Claim Pending\u00a0<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Challenging the Stigma<\/strong><\/h4>\n
A Misunderstood Question\u00a0<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\n
\nRead More: Medical Cannabis User Challenges Urine-Test Regime for Workers<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"