Sunnyvale, CA: A growing number of companies are either abandoning marijuana-specific drug testing programs or reducing the frequency with which they test, according to nationwide survey data compiled by the online recruitment website Simply Hired Incorporated.
Fifty-five percent of hiring managers polled in the survey said that their companies do not test current employees for off-the-job marijuana use. Among those hiring managers who work for companies that do engage in testing, 40 percent said that "they do it less often than in the past." Larger-sized companies (1,000+ employees) were far more likely to utilize pre-employment testing for cannabis than were smaller-sized companies.
Nearly 70 percent of hiring managers said that their company would be "okay" with an employee using cannabis while away from work "as long as the company remains unaware of it." Among employees surveyed, 75 percent said testing positive for marijuana should not be grounds for automatic termination.
According to a comprehensive review of over 10,000 peer-reviewed studies by the National Academy of Sciences in 2017, "There is no or insufficient evidence to support … a statistical association between cannabis use and … occupational accidents or injuries."
Full text of the SimplyHired.com survey is online. Additional information regarding cannabis regulation and its impact on the workplace is available from the NORML fact-sheet.