The feds will still go after it as an illegal drug when presented as recreational and the will keep the stigma going on forever. Furthermore it will keep a lot of talented people out of good job opportunities for smoking a joint after work instead of having a glass of wine.
“The justification”
They don’t legally need a justification. The reality is that drug tests just like felony checks are very good filters for bad employees. If a company actually needs employees they won’t do them, or lower the standards so low that anyone that isn’t actively injecting or murdering someone would pass.
The moment there isn’t federal law to lean on, I hope for and expect court cases predicated on the fact that there’s no basis for an employer to care more about whether someone has smoked cannabis in the past thirty days than they do about whether that same employee gets blackout drunk every Friday and Saturday night - nor for that matter if the person responsibly drinks a couple beers after work some nights. (Or is someone pushing to detect alcohol use within the past 30 days as a reason to disqualify employment?)
Neither of those details of their lives speaks to someone’s sobriety at work, and the basis for considering marijuana usage as somehow “worse” is rooted directly in the racist basis for policies enacted at the very start of cannabis prohibition.
If this is true, drug testing should start at the CEO.
Edit2: Hanging onto this for 2 months before replying, or just like trolling through old cannabis discussions looking for an argument, or…?
“the past 30 days”
So you literally don’t know how drug tests work? Marijuana clears an oral test in about a day, most jobs that test for it simply tell you to come back the next day. This is in legal state, and covers the vast majority of jobs. If you can’t be sober for a full 24-hrs before a pre-employment check you’re an addict. This would be like if someone admitted to being drunk the morning of an interview.
“Neither of those details speaks to sobriety at work”
Again you’re confused by the efficacy of drug tests. If you can’t be sober for 1 or 2 days to get your job that you applied for, it’s far less likely that you are going to be sober on the clock. (Few places do uranalysis, and I’ve literally never heard of a blood or hair test which are the ones that actually can reliably test that far back).
Strictly speaking you cannot prove that the person who shot heroin during your interview, is also going to do drugs on the clock. It is however a very good indicator that they are unprofessional, will be a bad employee and are quite likely to drugs on the clock. Companies don’t just spend thousands of dollars a year to be cruel to employees.
I was thinking urinalysis, which I was always told was ~30 days. It doesn’t change the argument.
C-level or anyone in the company exempt? Do we monitor alcohol usage so closely? Would people tolerate it if we did? Federal law is the only reasonable basis for an employer to be testing for off the clock use of a drug that is legal or decriminalized in that state. Otherwise it’s an invasion of privacy. And yes, it is, whether you tell me it legally is or not.