On Thursday, the State Supreme Court ruled against “Jane Roe”, a woman in Bremerton who was fired by TeleTech because she was a medical marijuana patient. The Seattle Times explains why they had no other choice:
The plaintiff, who sued under the pseudonym Jane Roe, was pulled out of her training class after a week and fired Oct. 18, 2006, because she failed a pre-employment drug test. She had a valid medical-marijuana authorization from a doctor.
In court documents, the company said its contract with Sprint required drug testing and makes no exception for medical marijuana.
Thankfully, we have choices in cell phone providers. I’ll be contacting Sprint regarding this case, and asking why their policy makes no exception for medical marijuana. For those of you out there with Sprint coverage, here’s a page edited by Wired that gives you tips on how to get out of your cellular contract.
UPDATE: Danny Westneat has a great column about the Jane Roe at the center of this case.
Unfortunately it is becoming increasingly clear that there is a coordinated multi-state assault on voter initiative mandated medical marijuana laws. For some reason eliminating medical marijuana has become a top priority of the Obama administration and local authorities.
This instance of employment discrimination is just another example of the hysteria that was whipped-up against cannabis over the years. Lots of employers out there have drug testing for cannabis use, but all that’s going to be obsolete soon. {Wonder if they’ll develop drug testing for alcohol use the night before??}
Be sure to sign the proposal to put I-1149 on this November’s ballot. It’s time to end these crazy drug laws, starting with the laws against cannabis!
The state supreme court case didn’t even try to litigate the most obvious problem with this case: why in hell does anyone need to pass a drug screening test to work at a call center? It’s not like she was going to be operating heavy machinery or working air traffic control. Hell, for a job that tedious and mind-numbing, I would think illicit substance use might help job performance.
So long as I’m not harming others, it’s nobody else’s business what I put in my body. Not the government’s, and certainly not a major corporation’s.
From the link:
.
That was actually my first thought: if Roe was using medical marijuana due to the medical treatment of a disability, the company was clearly violating the ADA by firing her.
The link also quotes a company spokesman as justifying the drug test by its wanting to prevent employees from divulging confidential customer information. As if being high in your off hours makes someone more likely to write down a credit card number and post it on the Internets.
Idiots.
Are the marijuana laws the issue or just a symptom of it? Could it be that what they really don’t like is the little people deciding such things for themselves?
RCW 69.51A.005 says “medical” marijuana is for people “with terminal or debilitating illnesses.” If you’re sick enough to qualify, you’re too sick to work.
This is one post I think the Supremes got wrong. If she needs MM to live then she should get the job exemption!
@6
Wow, so so dumb.
The point of using medical marijuana is so that the effects of the illness are no longer debilitating. Like with migraines in this case. Do you have any idea how many people rely on medical marijuana simply to be able to function normally?
@8 Almost as dumb as the poster @7 — who obviously hasn’t read the court decision.
Medical marijuana will continue to be in a gray area as long as federal and state governments enact concurrent laws and there’s a conflict between federal and state law.
As a practical matter, what MMA means is the state will no longer prosecute you if you comply with MMA. One down, one to go.
The question then becomes how willing are federal law enforcers and prosecutors to exert themselves to go after medical marijuana suppliers and users. If they want to shut it down, it’s logical they’d go after the suppliers, to choke the supply chain. One patient probably isn’t worth an assistant U.S. attorney’s time.
Switching providers won’t help – most corporate employers now do pre-employment drug screening (none for alcohol use, unfortunately). This tends to give corporations and even smaller companies a break on their insurance rates.
This is bigger than smoking a joint – whether for medicinal use, or pleasure, or both.
This is about maintaining and extending the puritanical/corporate reach for further control of our lives – something the Obama Administration seems to have no compunction about facilitating.
Corporate America wants hordes of desperate, frightened bots to toil away under more and more restrictive conditions. I think the ease with which stepping out of line gets you a criminal record, or a damaged credit score, is a feature not a bug – disempowering masses is the name of the game.
It’s a sick confluence of Calvinistic judgement and capitalistic greed that underlies the assault on joyful existence.
Oh-oh.
Stoner Lee’s new job may be in danger!
(Cough, hack, whoa! Head explodes with all the other stoners who refuse to grow up in King County)
What a bad week for the Spicolli clan. :)
LOL.
But then again, Lee is just a plain up stoner, and not a medical marijuana patient after all, now is he?
Good weekend all.
Mr. Hand would be proud.
You’re just stupid Roger Dumb Rabbit…
Sometimes the court decision is “legally right” while it conflicts with a person’s legal right.
Stay moronic. Your an expert at it!
@13
Stoner Lee’s new job may be in danger!
Uhhhh, no.
But then again, Lee is just a plain up stoner, and not a medical marijuana patient after all, now is he?
Uhhhh, no. I’m neither.
Fail.
@14 Get back to us after you’ve read the decision and can string together a coherent sentence about what it says.
@16
Asking Pud for a coherent sentence – now that’s rich – you crack me up, Roger.
Switching from Sprint would make sense only if you switched to a provider that does allow employees to use medical marijuana. Do you have any idea which providers, if any, do?
@18
I don’t know, but I’d like to find out. I might go to the mall kiosks and ask the employees there if they had to take drug tests and start from there. I emailed Sprint through my customer service account about their policy and I’ll see if I hear back this week.
We use CREDO mobile and long distance. I don’t know what their employment policies are, but they do distribute profits back to lefty charities that the subscribers vote for each year.
They do, however, IIRC, buy their access from SPRINT, so it’s still tainted.
Why? Your commentary in another thread claimed you needed to parse the decision for all of us because of “your overblown ego”. Oh… that’s just a leftist pinhead service you provide eh Dumb Rabbit?
Maybe virtual oxygen bottles are not the remedy but an ambulance to your hole in the ground with real oxygen is now needed.