Gov. Ted Kulongoski’s ambitious climate-change agenda notwithstanding, the 2009 Legislature’s biggest challenge will be money. Unless the economy stages a miraculous recovery, Oregon’s tax collections will trail its lawmakers’ ambitions significantly in the coming months. What better time for Salem to show some appreciation for employers, who create the jobs and revenue on which the state runs?

For starters, lawmakers should reconsider a proposal that died in committee two years ago. Senate Bill 465 would have allowed employers to fire anyone who tested positive for marijuana. It breezed through the Senate by a vote of 23-to-5, but failed to come up for a vote in the House. The business coalition that pushed for its passage in 2007, the Drug Free Workplace Legislative Work Group, wants lawmakers to give it another shot.

The story of Emerald Steel Fabricators, a small business in Eugene, demonstrates how badly such protection is needed. Five years ago, Emerald hired a drill press operator on a trial basis. The employee, afraid that he wouldn’t be hired permanently, didn’t tell Emerald that he held a medical marijuana card, which allowed him to “treat” his nausea and abdominal cramps (though not at work). During the man’s interview, however, the machine shop foreman did tell him that he wouldn’t be hired permanently until he’d taken a drug test.

Eventually, the drill press operator told his supervisor about the pot card and his medical problems. Emerald opted not to hire him. Almost immediately, the man filed a complaint with the Bureau of Labor and Industries, which, following a hearing before an administrative law judge, ordered Emerald to cough up $8,013.50 in back pay and $20,000 for emotional distress. Emerald had employed the man for less than two months.

Emerald pursued its case, and less than five months ago the state Court of Appeals sided with BOLI, reasoning that Emerald had failed to accommodate the drill press operator’s disability.

Emerald could have used SB 465, which explicitly allows employers to enforce policies “to achieve or maintain a drug-free workforce.” Should the bill resurface, medical-pot advocates will wail, gnash their teeth and accuse lawmakers of violating the spirt of Ballot Measure 67, the 1998 initiative that legalized medicinal marijuana. Lawmakers should ignore them. Measure 67 was sold as an act of mercy for patients with truly debilitating illnesses — AIDS, cancer and so on. It wasn’t sold as a do-it-yourself medication program for people healthy enough to operate drill presses and heavy machinery.

Nevertheless, that’s exactly how the law has been used. We doubt the Legislature is prepared to start yanking medical marijuana cards, which now number about 20,000. That’s fine, we suppose. But lawmakers can, and should, force legal pot users to accept the consequences of their decision to self-medicate. They can do this by allowing companies like Emerald to fire (and not hire) people who violate their drug free-workplace policies. Do that, and a lot of Oregon’s medical marijuana users might suddenly discover that conventional prescription drugs work just fine.

Published Daily in Bend Oregon by Western Communications, Inc. © 2008

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