Determining What Marijuana Costs Employers: The Birth of a White Paper

(Summer 2015) In May 2014, Dee Mason, president of Working Partners® and 11 national experts gathered in Atlanta to talk about marijuana’s impact on businesses. The result of this meeting was What Will Legal Marijuana Cost Employers?, a 60-page white paper published by National Families in Action (NFIA)*.

“This white paper is the culmination of our think tank’s conversation,” said Dee Mason. “It was a fascinating endeavor to be a part of; not only was I able to share what businesses care about concerning this issue, I gained some great insight into other arenas.”

Written for employers large and small, this white paper examines the complexities employers face as marijuana is legalized for medical or recreational use in various states. Its format mirrors the approach the think tank took and poses a number of questions which are starting to surface in the courts and employers’ minds:

• What if courts hold that failing a pre-employment drug test is no longer a valid reason to deny employment to applicants?
• Will employers have to accommodate marijuana use in their workplace?
• Must employers pay for employees’ medical marijuana if they are injured on the job?
• Must employers pay unemployment compensation to employees terminated for failing a marijuana drug test?
• If we know that marijuana compromises the ability to perform, how do employers ensure safety on the job if they forego testing for marijuana to avoid dealing with the repercussion of a positive test results?
• How will legalization impact the costs of insurances needed to operate businesses?
• How can employers meet federal requirements to maintain a drug-free workplace if states require proof of impairment prior to testing? Testing has been the defensible standard as evidence of a violation for over 30 years because no level of impairment has been scientifically established, nor has a noninvasive chemical test been devised to denote impairment.
• If courts hold that drug testing is no longer a valid indicator of impairment, how can employers whose businesses involve driving or safety-sensitive positions protect their workers and the public from injuries and death caused by stoned workers?
• What guarantees exist to ensure that the social costs of legal, commercial marijuana won’t overwhelm moneys raised through tax revenues? Who will make up the difference?

Using scenarios, the paper explores several of these questions employers must answer. Sans answers, employers face costly litigation to resolve issues surrounding legal marijuana.

The insights are helpful not only to employers but also to leadership helping communities navigate this issue. For example, the paper explores the question about what increased marijuana use portends for the future workforce when research shows that, compared to non-users, teens who smoke marijuana on weekends over a two-year period are six times more likely to drop out of high school, three times less likely to enter college, and four times less likely to earn a college degree.

The paper also includes valuable appendices offering concise focuses:

• Compendium of Current Marijuana Laws
• Other Health Effects of Marijuana
• Why We Won’t Know If Legalization Increases Use Until 2017
• The More Medical Marijuana Dispensaries, the More Adolescent Users

“Working Partners® has interviewed businesses and system leaders in Ohio and I couldn’t be more convinced of the need for the information in this paper,” said Mason. “As one person shared during the interview process ‘Business is asleep at the wheel of this issue – and that is scary!’”

Why? Because the prevalence of marijuana in the workplace is changing.

Quest Diagnostics, recently published data from over 10 million workplace drug tests administered in 2014:

Although these statistics could provoke several causal interpretations for debate, the trending is inescapable. Marijuana is being used by employees, making it imperative for employers to review legalization laws and proposals for meaningful operational answers.

To write the white paper, NFIA contracted with Kevin Sabet, PhD, co-founder of Washington D.C.’s Project SAM (Smart Approaches to Marijuana). In addition to Kevin Sabet and two NFIA representatives, the other experts came from a variety of affected fields to collaborate on the task, and were hosted by Kent “Oz” Nelson, chairman and CEO (ret.) of United Parcel Service. The impressive group included specialized attorneys, human resources specialists, occupational health nurse leadership, Robert DuPont, MD (the first director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse), John Caulkins, PhD of Carnegie Mellon University, and Dee Mason .

We at Working Partners° highly encourage our readership to review this paper and all other business-centric discussion papers and conversations that are surfacing on the impacts of legalized marijuana use. (Be sure to see our article titled, “Ten Additional Resources for Your Drug-Free Workplace Program.”)

*“What Will Legal Marijuana Cost Employers?” was made possible by a grant from the Bodman Foundation of New York founded in 1945. This grant-making philanthropic organization spreads its awards ($2.06M in 2014) over six program areas: Arts and Culture, Education, Employment, Health, Public Policy, and Youth and Families. National Families in Action (NFIA) realized this grant project in 2014.