Builders seek to bar legal pot users

SALEM – A construction industry group wants companies to have the legal right to bar users of medical marijuana from working in potentially hazardous jobs like operating heavy machinery.

It is an issue that Oregon lawmakers will likely take up during a month-long session that begins Feb. 4, and one that will produce vigorous debate over whether people’s right to legally use medical marijuana can be trumped by issues such as workplace safety.

Under Oregon’s 1998 medical marijuana law, employers don’t have to let patients with medical marijuana cards smoke it in the workplace. But the law left it unclear whether employers must accommodate workers who smoke medical marijuana off the job.

Negotiations are being conducted at the state’s Capitol over a bill sought by Associated General Contractors specifying that medical marijuana users who work in dangerous or “safety-sensitive” jobs could be fired or disciplined if they test positive for marijuana – even if they smoked it days or weeks prior to the test.

Those jobs would include driving large trucks, handling explosives, working at construction sites and other jobs listed as hazardous under state work safety laws.

The bill will be sponsored by the House Business and Labor Committee, whose chairman says the aim isn’t to fire medical marijuana patients from their jobs, but to protect public safety.

“I am in no way opposed to use of medical marijuana for those who need it,” said state Rep. Mike Schaufler, D-Happy Valley. “But ask yourself, do you want concrete truck drivers driving down your streets under the influence of medical marijuana?”

Medical marijuana activist John Sajo said Schaufler’s bill is a solution in search of a problem.

A similar bill was approved by the Senate in the 2007 legislative session, but it stalled in the House over concerns that it unfairly targeted medical marijuana cardholders.

During legislative hearings on the issue last year, Sajo said, “no one was able to identify a single case where a medical marijuana patient had caused a workplace accident or problem.”

“The vast majority of medical marijuana patients are too ill to work,” Sajo said.

Since voters passed Oregon’s medical marijuana law in 1998, the number of patients who have cards to legally obtain the drug has risen to nearly 16,000.

Eleven other states – including Washington as well as Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Rhode Island and Vermont – have medical marijuana laws. None has passed legislation similar to the Oregon bill that is being proposed.