More Employees are Testing Positive for Pot After Workplace Accidents
Comments (7)
I can definitely see this happening. There's some good data in that article, so thanks for posting.
The problem is that testing positive doesn't equate to being impaired. Another issue I see them running into is whether they had justification to do post-incident testing because unless you noticed signs/symptoms of marijuana impairment, you can test them post-incident like you used to.
Also, the article states "In 2022, post-accident marijuana positivity of urine drug tests in the general U.S. workforce was 7.3%, an increase of 9% compared to 6.7% in 2021." Last I checked, 6.7 to 7.3 was only 0.6, not 9. 🤣
Agree with Drew...the problem with any drug testing is that a positive test does not necessarily equal impairment.
Imagine if you could test positive for alcohol 2 weeks after having a drink...
It would be interesting to test for EtG for alcohol metabolites. This would show how much workers drink but aren't necessarily intoxicated. We recently removed THC from our post-accident drug screen unless there are signs of intoxication. Still test for alcohol and other drugs.
Most of the states we operate in have some type of legal cannabis. We shouldn't discipline people for ingesting legal substances because we don't have a good test for THC.