California bill would protect employees who use cannabis outside work

9/1/2022

This week, lawmakers in Sacramento passed a bill that would protect employees who use marijuana while they’re off the clock — a win for cannabis reformers after earlier versions of the measure stalled in previous legislative sessions. If the governor signs it, California would become the seventh state to restrict companies from penalizing employees who get high on their own time.

It’s been six years since California legalized recreational marijuana, but workers in the state can still face punishment if they fail cannabis tests required by their employers.

The legislation is part of a broader nationwide shift in drug policy that involves creating protections for marijuana users that weren’t included in the wave of cannabis legalization laws adopted in recent years.

“It’s a bigger trend of moving beyond just legalizing marijuana, stopping arrests and stopping throwing people in jail for using it,” said Robert Mikos, an expert on drug law at Vanderbilt University. “It’s providing the same level of legal rights and protections for marijuana users that you have for users of prescription drugs, alcohol and tobacco.”

There’s no single reason that officials have been slow to get employment protections on the books as states have changed cannabis laws, Mikos said. Some may have been wary of workplace safety concerns related to marijuana use, he said. Others may have worried about rankling employers and prompting them to lobby against legalization when it was up for debate.

It also could have simply been an oversight, Mikos said.

“There are lots of statutes that already protect people for using other medications or for engaging in legal activities off the job,” he said. “So lawmakers might have thought other statutes would protect medical or recreational marijuana users. In a lot of places, that proved to be false.”