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Oregon Lawmakers Revisit Worker Protections for Off-Duty Cannabis Use

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[dropcap class=”kp-dropcap”]O[/dropcap]regon lawmakers will consider making it illegal to fire employees for consuming cannabis while off the clock, reviving a workers’ rights campaign that failed in the state government last year. Senate Bill 301, which aimed to loosen employment restrictions, generally dealt with discrimination against medical cannabis cardholders who tested positive for cannabis.

The new proposed bill, Legislative Concept 2152, would also protect job seekers who consume legal substances like cannabis. The proposal reflects a debate on whether Oregon workers should stay away from cannabis for fear of losing their jobs or offers for employment. The latest proposal has come before the Senate Interim Committee on Judiciary, chaired by Sen. Floyd Prozanski. Prozanski said the new proposal was a redrafted form of SB-301.

Former President Ronald Reagan’s Drug-Free Workplace Act requires all federal workplaces to be drug-free and bans employees from using narcotics, but a bill  has been introduced to Congress to protect employees that consume cannabis in legal states. SB-301 included exceptions for labor agreements, workers that do their jobs while impaired and contracts between employers and federal employees that must maintain a “drug-free workplace” to receive federal funding.

“There are a lot of questions employers have when it comes to establishing workplace rules, particularly when it comes to cannabis,” Beau Whitney, a senior economist with Washington, D.C.-based cannabis think tank New Frontier Data, said.

The proposed bill wouldn’t allow employees to consume cannabis if their collective bargaining agreements prohibit using cannabis, even when not at work. The bill also prohibits cannabis use if there is a “bonafide occupational qualification” associated with a job.

Leland Berger, a Portland attorney and cannabis activist involved in the campaign, said he got a call this week from a man who got turned down for a job because he was a medical cannabis patient, with Berner calling the discrimination against cannabis “cannabigotry.”

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