“Several states, like Nevada and New York, have moved in this direction — as have numerous cities, like Atlanta and Philadelphia — and it is no surprise to see major employers moving in this same, common-sense direction.”
Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney has signed municipal legislation into law prohibiting certain citywide employers from requiring prospective hires to pass a pre-employment drug screen. It takes effect on January 1, 2022.
Council members decided 15 to 1 in favor of the measure, which “prohibits employers from requiring prospective employees to undergo testing for the presence of marijuana as a condition of employment”
“The abolishment of this discriminatory policy is long overdue. The use of cannabis during one’s off hours poses no legitimate workplace safety threat and the tens of millions of Americans who engage in this behavior should no longer be stigmatized or denied employment because of it.”
“We found that workers reporting using cannabis more than once in the past year were no more likely to report having experienced a work-related injury over the same time period in a large cohort of the Canadian working population.”
“It is mind-boggling that the federal government is revisiting this half-baked proposal now. The idea of proposing a testing procedure that will inherently deny more people of color opportunities than it would others who have engaged in exactly the same activities is beyond tone deaf and counterproductive.”
“[A]fter-work cannabis use did not relate to any of the workplace performance dimensions. This finding casts doubt on some stereotypes of cannabis users.”
“Suspicionless marijuana testing never has been an evidence-based policy. Rather, these discriminatory practices are a holdover from the zeitgeist of the 1980s ‘war on drugs.’