Connect with us

Business

Caesars Palace Drops Drug Testing for Cannabis

Published

on

[dropcap class=”kp-dropcap”]W[/dropcap]hat happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, and what happens off the clock is your own business. On Monday, a spokesperson for Caesars Entertainment Corp. confirmed that the company will not screen job applicants for cannabis consumption as a requirement of employment.

The company spokesman acknowledged that they are missing out on hardworking employees that consume cannabis on their own time. “A number of states have changed their laws and we felt we might be missing some good candidates because of the marijuana issue and we felt that pre-screening for marijuana was on the whole, counterproductive,” Rich Broome, executive vice president of corporate communications and community affairs for Caesars told The Las Vegas Review-Journal. “If somebody is believed to be using or high at work, then we would continue to screen for marijuana and other drugs.”

With recreational cannabis legal in Nevada, it doesn’t make much sense to continue testing for cannabis when other legal substances, such as alcohol or tobacco don’t prevent a person from getting a job.

Obviously, jobs that require constant motor abilities will continue to require a drug screen, including cannabis. “There are certain jobs which there are U.S. Department of Transportation requirements that we’re mandated to pre-screen for marijuana,” he said. “So we’ll still screen for those.”

According to the Nevada Association of Employers, which consists of about 400 employers, an estimated one-tenth of employers in Nevada have already stopped testing for cannabis.

According to a 2011 poll conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management, 57 percent of employers continue to test job candidates for drug use.

The Reagan-era Drug-Free Workplace Act of 1988 set in motion the standard of requiring drug screens for most respectable jobs, and is in great need of an update. Caesars Entertainment Corp. joins other companies like AutoNation Inc. that no longer test for cannabis.

Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *