Businesses are scrambling to ready themselves, with employees’ recreational use of the drug expected to soar
Companies are scrambling to get answers about how to keep their workplaces – and the public – safe and drug-free when recreational marijuana is legalized next year, with strict limitations on drug testing proving a challenging area to navigate.
Transport employers are “very concerned” about the law change that’s anticipated to come into effect next July, a lobby group representing Air Canada, Canadian Pacific Railway and the Canadian Trucking Alliance says.
Derrick Hynes, executive director of Federally Regulated Employers - Transportation and Communications (FETCO), says while companies have policies and processes in place to deal with medical marijuana, they’re facing largely unchartered waters with recreational marijuana.
“When marijuana is legalised, and it becomes a freely-available substance, such as alcohol, we believe that the world is going to change quite dramatically … It will bring enhanced risk to the workplace.
“There’s a lot of concern about what that might mean, particularly as we look at safety-sensitive industries.”
FETCO represents numerous employers across aviation, maritime and transport industries, as well as communications and postal services, and how they are expected to adapt is still highly unclear.
Though there are statutory limits to measure alcohol impairment, there are no such limits for marijuana – and it’s still unclear whether limitations on workplace drug testing will be loosened, Hynes says.
Adapting to the law change will also undoubtedly add costs for businesses who have to deal with new HR challenges.
But, Hynes adds, “it’s not really so much a financial matter as it is safety”.
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