Lawmakers have killed a bill that sought to prohibit employers from firing or refusing to hire an employee based on their use of marijuana.
Before the fatal vote, a House committee on Thursday unanimously chose to rewrite House Bill 1152, replacing it with a proposed task force to study medical marijuana use in employment. As originally written, the bill would have allowed people to use marijuana outside of work and allowed card-carrying medical marijuana individuals to use the drug during work without professional consequences.
“The original bill has been introduced five times in the legislature, and each time it has failed,” said bill sponsor Rep. Edie Hooton, D-Boulder. “(This would have) opened up the conversation between employers and workers, which is in the best interest of both parties.”
The House Business Affairs and Labor Committee indefinitely postponed the bill, 12-1, with only Rep. Tom Sullivan, D-Centennial, voting in support of the measure.
Under the rewritten bill, a task force would have been created to consider how medical marijuana users could be employed without creating safety issues in the workplace. The task force would have recommended legislation based on its findings, though lawmakers would not be obligated to pursue the legislation.
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Despite the amended bill not making any actual legislative changes, opponents said it would have attempted to find an avenue in which employers would be forced to allow medical marijuana use in the workplace, which they said is unacceptable.
“At the end of the day, this really boils down to an employer’s right to operate their business in a safe and quality way,” said David Burks, owner of Sweetheart Winery in Loveland, during Thursday’s committee meeting. “Our people need to be on top of their game, and they can’t do that if they’re impaired.”
In addition to opponents who spoke at the meeting, nearly 70 businesses and organizations registered against the original bill, while only one — the Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition — supported it.
Some opponents said the bill is simply coming too soon because of the lack of technology to measure marijuana impairment. In Colorado, a person is considered legally impaired by marijuana if a blood test finds at least 5 nanograms of THC per milliliter of blood. However, some studies have found that THC in the bloodstream does not correlate to impairment and that there is no objective threshold for marijuana impairment.
“This is a necessary conversation,” said Eric Bergman, spokesman for Colorado Counties Inc., arguing that employers need to be able to measure whether employees are impaired if using medical marijuana at work. “Until such time when a test is available that will measure the active THC or the impairment levels in the bloodstream, we simply can’t move forward on this issue.”
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Hooton said her intention with the bill was to protect the rights of Coloradans who use medical marijuana for health conditions, such as chronic pain and seizures. She said it is “grossly unfair” that these users lose out on employment opportunities that require drug tests.
The Colorado Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that companies are allowed to fire employees for using marijuana outside of work. Coats v. Dish Network revolved around a satellite TV provider firing a quadriplegic employee after he failed a random drug test. The employee, 35-year-old Brandon Coats, had a state-issued medical marijuana card and used the drug at night to help him sleep and quiet his muscle spasms.
“As a person with a disability and someone who uses medical marijuana, this bill is important,” said Francesca Mayes with the Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition. “It allows those who need it to work a full day without being in pain. It allows an employee the same rights as everyone else who relies on medication during the workday.”
While marijuana use is prohibited under federal law, it has been legal for medical use in Colorado since 2009 and for recreational use since 2014.
“There are over 84,000 medical cannabis patients in Colorado, many of whom are denied employment opportunities despite being high-functioning,” Hooton said. “There is discrimination against medical cannabis users, which not only spills out into the workplace, but it also suggests to all Coloradans that medical cannabis use is dangerous, that it results in cognitive and physical impairment.”
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