I'm torn on this one. The issue is that <big employer> is going to be fucked by the laws from the War on Drugs. But at the same time is it worth X number of "low-level" employees to fight it?

I think decrim is bullshit. First, it's only going to free resources to go after big-time dealers, so what's the point? Second, legalization people would have had this completed thirty years ago if they'd been able to concentrate.

Marijuana sucks.

Can Mr. Casias determine the precise time it takes for his painkiller to be completely out of his system so that he's not impaired to the most remote degree? Some of the material I've seen indicates that it's rapid acting and SHOULD be low serum levels after 3-4 hours, but if he's a chronic user, the predictability is lessened.

Clinically, Mr. Casias can't be making the call as to whether or not he's impaired, nor does any employer want to have to perform a sobriety test on their employees when they come to work each day. It sucks horribly that he has cancer. I've had enough patients in intractable pain over the last month to not be sympathetic to his plight. But he and WalMart are both in a Catch-22. If he gets hurt at work, and they've known he's got it in his system, they're liable. Any attorney can make this into a monster.

I wonder what would have happened if Mr. Casias had been prescribed a potent but more conventional drug for his pain, a narcotic such as codeine for example. Would Wal-Mart have felt a need to fire him in that case?

As Juliana points out above, poor Mr. Casias is in a miserable state. But I can kind of see the position Wal-Mart is in right now. I would imagine that with any drug, there will be legitimate users and illegitimate abusers. How do you sort out the two? How do you differentiate someone who has a legal medical requirement for marijuana use from the average pothead? On the other hand, how do you separate people with a medical need for conventional drugs from pain pill addicts?

Last I checked, employers could decide what substances they did or did not want their employees using. Many will fire you for alcohol if you test positive for it, even if it's so low you're unaffected (pilots come to mind for one). Police can give you DUI's for being on perfectly legal medication too, if they believe it's impairing you. I fall firmly in the at-will employment camp, which means either party can terminate the working relationship for whatever reason they choose, personally.

Even if they are a racist firing a mexican for marrying a white woman?

From what I read, he was randomly tested. There were no performance issues that led to the test, it's just something the company does. I say let adults use anything they want to, and if it makes them behave in ways that make them unemployable, then they need to adjust their behaviors.

I don't believe in medical marijuana. I think people should be able to use marijuana just because they want to.

I worked at a grocery store through college. We got stoned almost every day when we walked in. Nobody seemed to care because we got the job done. Hey, I gotta look up my old buddies Bruce and Jim...

PS- We used to do funny things over the store intercom system, but nobody ever got arrested.

"Even if they are a racist firing a mexican for marrying a white woman?"

Yep. If enough people have issues with mexicans being fired, they won't patronize that company and the company can go out of business or change. I think a business owner should be in charge of their business, period, and be allowed to make the decisions they think are best for them.

Great idea. Unfortunately congress has said "If you are a stoner the company employing you can and should fire you."

My thought is if he needed medical marijuana to work than it was clearly affecting him (or else he would not need it) and thus the company has reason to control his use of it. If he didn't medical marijuana to work than he didn't need medical marijuana at all.

I need air, and food, and water to work. The corporation should decide if I'm allowed to have them, and when, and how much.

Wal-Mart can and does fire people for any reason or none at all. Even if pot were legal they might do things like this because they can.

>>Marijuana sucks.

I'd sure like to see your data.

First, let me make myself clear. I have never used pot, nor ever been drunk on booze, and haven't touched a drop of booze in maybe 30 years. I have no personal agenda, but I am tired of our prisons being filled for no valid reason, and lives being destroyed based on ignorance.

Back in the 70's, I took a Criminal Justice course as an elective, because I CLEP-ed out of the core requirements. We had to do a term paper, and I decided I'd like to write on the law in South or North Dakota, can't remember which one, which gave life in prison for one marijuana cigarette.

That life in prison for one cigarette seemed a bit much. The instructor, a ten year police veteran, said, "Oh, that sounds like a good paper."

I went to the library and started digging, trying to find the scientific evidence that justified life in prison for one smoke. I couldn't find any such evidence, just general pontificating that marijuana was bad, and that it lead to hard drugs, etc.

I went back to the instructor and asked for advice. He listed JAMA (the AMA journal) and some other sources I might dig into.

I dug, and found no scientific evidence at all, just more pontificating that marijuana leads to the more dangerous drugs.

I went back to him, and told him I wasn't finding anything. He looked at me as if I were an idiot, which I guess I was, and said, "When are you going to figure it out?"

I am going by memory here, because it isn't worth a great amount of time to dig for it. But, in 1894, Britain asked a blue ribbon commission of top scientists, called I believe the India Hemp Drug Commission, or something like that, to study the use of hemp in India, where it was commonly used. They reported that it was much better for the population to use hemp, than to force them on alcohol, because alcohol causes so much more problems in every area.

In the 20's, Mayor La Guardia did the same thing for NYC because large numbers of immigrants were using hemp, and his commission issued the same ruling. Don't get them off hemp and on to alcohol!!!

About the time of my paper, Consumer's Report did a major feature article on Marijuana, and they also found no scientific evidence that marijuana led to harder drugs. They found a study on some ocean isle where people don't smoke it, they eat it, which gives them a much harsher dose, and the only difference they found, comparing users to non-users, on all sorts of health issues and social issues, like jail time, divorce, DV, unemployment rates, etc., was less resistance to some minor virus thingie of no serious consequence.

I found other studies which showed pot users drive better than boozers. Less social problems than drunks. Better employment stats then boozers.

So, why is marijuana illegal? I found out exactly why. Big business (you liberals aren't always wrong, it just seems that way, heh, heh) in the form of whiskey companies spent millions of dollars when prohibition was repealed to successfully brainwash this nation that marijuana turned people into raging killers. They had no such evidence; they invented it like the Global Warming nuts invented GW. It's called stiffing the competition.

It was easy, because in those days only the Mexicans and a few avant-garde intellectuals used pot and no one cared what happened to the Mexicans and to the intellectuals, much like today.

Having said all that, let me add there is an issue, not with hemp as such, but with ILLEGAL hemp. You buy it from scum buckets, who are not above lacing little Johnny's pot with amphetamines; cocaine; crack; even arsenic. First, to sell more of "the good stuff with a buzz" and of course, second, to get people hooked on the stronger drugs.

I told my family (parents, siblings) about my study, and they immediately told me I was a fool. My mother said, "Your brother sees them using it all the time at the gas station where he works. You can tell by their red eyes."

Alas, the doctors had a list, and it is not pot that causes those red eyes, but one of the standard contaminants listed above. Yes, I know which one.

They used to say Pot turned people into raging killers. When that was proved to be a lie, they then said it led to harder drugs. When it was proved that was false, they kept digging deeper and deeper. At one point they said, well, an electron microscope can see a difference in neurons between pot smokers and non-smokers. Pullleeezzze!

They waited a few years, then went back to the beginning of the list, pot makes you crazy. Nothing stops these morons.

We are a sick nation with the highest percentage of its citizens in prison of any nation in the world. We are not safe driving across country, because the war on drugs involves laws which have motivated cops to stop cars without valid reasons, and commit perjury to confiscate legal quantities of money, or the cars themselves with no valid reasons. Illegal stopping has happened to me twice, and to my son, twice. Little kids get shot during drug raids by the cops. This insane War on Drugs does much more damage to our society than pot, or all the drugs for that matter.

Too lazy to google it, but didn't I just read something about a study showing a strong correlation between marijuana use and mental illness? Medical studies come and go, but if it's legitimate, that pretty much decides the issue for me.

I have NO patience with the war on drugs. It makes Vietnam look like a raging success. It's lasted most of my lifetime and cost more than all our wars combined ($100K/inmate/year) Legalize, stigmatize, and treat the users. The government ought to tax and sell the stuff - sounds contradictory, I know, but if the profit were gone from illegal drugs, the world would be a much safer place.

Sometimes, like every election, you don't get to pick an ideal solution, just the least bad one.

I did not read the study but I did ready a pretty through analysis of it. The major flaw in it was that the data did not indicate if use lead to increase chance of mental illness or if just that the mentally ill are more likely to use drugs (which has been found in a number of studies) was the cause of the data.

Someone should reefer him to a lawyer who will doobie something about it.

OK Momof4, suupose I had a small business and your husand worked for me, and one of your kids got a highly treatable but expensve form of cancer.

You'd be cool with me firing your husband for no ohter reason than the cost increase I'd have to pay for my employees health plan?

He's also still breaking Federal law.

It's stupid to fire him, but at the same time the fact that it's legal at the State level doesn't mean he's not breaking the law at all.

lujlp: Why are you even providing a health plan (as an employer) then?

People can buy their own insurance - especially if they're not being provided with a plan they're stuck with simply because they have the job, and are paying for it with reduced salary already.

(And if the State says You Must Provide Insurance, then it will also say You Must Not Fire Someone For It.

Mandates just keep expanding, don't they, in the effort to pretend costs don't exist...)