New legislation was recently introduced in the state Senate that, if passed, would prohibit employers from firing individuals solely on the basis that they are legal medical marijuana patients.
On Jan. 31, Democratic Sen. Mark Leno, who represents Marin and portions of San Francisco and Sonoma counties, introduced a bill that would prohibit discrimination of medical marijuana patients who use it legally outside of the workplace and outside of work hours.
The bill, Senate Bill 129, would reverse a California Supreme Court ruling that granted employers the right to either fire or refuse to hire workers with a physician’s recommendation for medicinal marijuana.
The case, 2008’s Ross v. RagingWire Telecommunications, involved a 45-year-old disabled Air Force veteran who was fired from his systems engineering job in 2001 after failing an employer-mandated drug test even though he informed his employer he was using medical marijuana under a doctor’s recommendation.
“I think anyone can grasp the fact that when voters approved Proposition 215 in 1996 [the Compassionate Use Act], their intent was certainly not to create an allowance for compassionate use only for unemployed people,” Leno told the Sun.
According to Leno, the bill does not require employers to accommodate smoking marijuana in the workplace or during working hours—which is illegal—under any circumstances. Nor does it require employers to hire or continue to employ medical marijuana patients that work in “safety-sensitive positions,” such as bus drivers, health-care providers, and operators of heavy machinery, for example.
Leno said SB 129 shifts the focus from testing for the detection of long-lasting metabolites in urine and blood, and instead focuses on impairment testing, which has been available on the market for many years, and is the root concern drug testing seeks to address.
“With unemployment at record-high rates, we do not need more people unemployed who are doing a good job and are productive members of the workforce,” Leno said.
As a state Assembly member, Leno sponsored a similar bill in 2008, less than a week after the Ross ruling. Despite having the support of disability rights, medical, and labor groups, and passing both legislative houses, the bill was vetoed by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
According to Americans for Safe Access, a pro-medical marijuana advocacy group, there are an estimated 400,000 doctor-recommended medical marijuana patients in the state of California.
According to statistics from the California Department of Public Health, in the 2009-10 fiscal year, 178 Santa Barbara County residents applied for, and received, state-issued Medical Marijuana Program identification cards, which are renewed annually.
This article appears in Feb 3-10, 2011.