By Bill Current, founder of the Current Consulting Group
NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, opposes drug testing. Of course, they favor the use of marijuana and its legalization (their advisory board includes cannabis luminaries like Willie Nelson and Tommy Chong). They do not believe employers should have the right to use drug testing as a way to deter their workers from showing up impaired by marijuana or getting high while on the job. Here’s what they state on their website:
“While NORML strongly opposes drug use on the job (we’ll come back to this), we think no one should be forced to submit to urine testing, especially for marijuana.”
They then go on to offer advice to marijuana users on how to successfully subvert a drug test.
That sounds like favoring marijuana use without workplace accountability. Despite the fact that drug testing has proven to be a powerful deterrent to drug use in the workplace and an effective way to identify people who need help, NORML opposes “urine testing, especially for marijuana.”
Recently, the Annapolis, Maryland City Council voted unanimously to “abolish” marijuana drug testing of most public employees. A representative from NORML testified at committee hearings in favor of the measure. According to a report on NORML’s website, this person said that urine drug testing “discriminates against people who are compliant with the state’s marijuana legalization laws, unnecessarily limits the pool of applicants seeking public employment, and punishes those who rely on the use of cannabis as a medicine.”
He also said: “It is time for workplace policies to adapt to this new reality and to cease punishing employees for activities they engage in during their off-hours that pose no workplace safety threat.”
However, anyone who follows this issue for a living should be aware of various studies and surveys that indicate marijuana use is not limited to evenings and weekends when employees are on their own time.
For instance, in a survey of 500 employees who admitted to being marijuana users, 31% confessed that they use marijuana during their commute to the workplace. Another survey of employees found that more than 1 in 5 said they have used marijuana recreationally in the workplace and during work hours. And, in the survey of 500 marijuana-using employees cited above, 48% admitted to using pot at work, either during breaks or while actively working.
It’s only fair to acknowledge what NORML has accomplished in support of the cause to make the most dangerous drug in the world legal, accessible, and socially acceptable, and they deserve kudos for their “Principles for Responsible Cannabis Use.” But the bottom line, as far as NORML is concerned, is marijuana is good and drug testing is bad. That’s their position and they don’t try to hide it.
But you can’t have it both ways if you’re in the drug testing business. You cannot support NORML or work with or for NORML or any other pro-drug organization and simultaneously attempt to make a living selling drug testing to unsuspecting employers or aspire to a leadership position in an association that believes that workplace marijuana use is bad and drug testing, especially for marijuana, is good. It’s antithetical. Or as the good book warns, “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other.” (Matthew 6:24 NIT Version)