Employers in the US have been engaged in rampant abuse of workers dignity, privacy, and liberties for a long time now. Now that the medicinal properties of marijuana has finally been recognized officially in half the country, employers fail to adapt and continue their abuse. This article briefly examines the major issues.

Lifestyle control (not impairment detection)

Contrary to conventional wisdom, employment drug testing for marijuana does not detect impairment. It only detects lifestyle. When someone smokes at home after work, or on vacation in Colorado or Amsterdam, they will only be impaired for a couple hours but they will test positive for as long as six weeks. So when a company forces staff to submit their urine for inspection, this is to select lifestyles. Drug testing is to control behavior outside of the workplace.

Denial of medical treatment

25 states permit doctors to be doctors, and prescribe medicinal marijuana when appropriate for a patient's condition. Yet employers are intervening to impose control over medical decisions of their staff, and across the board blocks treatments that people need. Effectively this enables companies put their culture and lifestyle preferences above (and to the detriment of) the workers health care.

Invasion of medical privacy

The drug test inappropriately discloses sensitive medical information to the employer. Under more socially responsible (often European) regimes, it's only appropriate to disclose sensitive medical information to qualified doctors. Under such regimes, if a condition impairs a workers' ability to perform a particular task, it's the doctor who judges this. And rightly so. The doctor then must inform the employer simply that the patients condition (or treatments thereof) are incompatible with the work. This disclosure is handled in a responsible way that respects the worker's medical privacy. But not in regions where companies drug test their staff.

Discrimination against pregnancy

Urine collected for the purposes of drug testing can be (and has been) used to test whether the employee or prospective employee is pregnant. It's often illegal. No one knows which employers are doing this - which is part of the problem. When someone hands over their urine they have no physical control over what tests are conducted. They generally cannot even choose the lab. They are expected to concede unconditional trust, despite the potential for abuse on the employers part. There is a built-in economical reward for employers who discover and avoid hiring pregnant women. And abuse has happened. The Washington D.C. police department admitted using drug tests to screen staff for pregnancy.

False-positives

Testing has flaws. Positive urine will sometimes test negative, and clean urine will sometimes test positive (for example, if the mass spectrometer was not cleaned well between samples). This causes a certain percentage of applicants to be denied employment wrongly. There is generally no legal recourse for this collateral damage.

Unsafe workplace due to false-safety

Managers improperly trust that drug tests will detect impairment. So they neglect to take actions that stand a chance to detect impairment, like a test of hand-eye coordination or motor skills. The false-security created by the misconception that the drug test detect impairment enables truly impaired workers to go unnoticed.