Pubdate: Mon, 4 Feb 2008
Source: Oregonian, The (Portland, OR)
Copyright: 2008 The Oregonian
Contact:  http://www.oregonlive.com/oregonian/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/324
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/opinion.htm (Opinion)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Marijuana - Medicinal)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/testing.htm (Drug Testing)

DON'T MAKE A BAD MARIJUANA LAW WORSE

Ten years ago, when Oregon voters approved the state's landmark 
Medical Marijuana Act, they did so with assurances that only a 
handful of very ill people needed it -- perhaps 500 a year, 
supporters said at the time.

That turned out to be a false promise, as critics warned at the time. 
They appear to have correctly predicted that the new law would open 
the door for wider use of pot in Oregon by creating new legal 
defenses for the possession, use, cultivation and delivery of marijuana.

Statistics strongly suggest this. Today, nearly 16,000 Oregonians 
hold patient cards entitling them to use marijuana. Nearly 8,000 hold 
"caregiver cards" so they can possess it, and about 4,000 have 
permits to grow the plant, resulting in at least 19 tons of marijuana 
growing legally at any given time.

Not surprisingly, the rate of marijuana use by adult Oregonians is 50 
percent higher than the national rate. Voters in 1998 may have 
thought they were showing compassion for a small number of terminally 
ill cancer patients who needed marijuana to alleviate their symptoms, 
but the law is clearly being abused in a big way.

This abuse is showing up in the workplace, where the Oregon drug test 
failure rate is 50 percent higher than the national rate. And the 
most prevalent reason for testing failure? Marijuana use -- 71 
percent of all positive tests in Oregon, compared with 53 percent nationally.

The 2007 Legislature had a chance to address the workplace issue but 
fell short. A bill to make it easier for Oregon employers to enforce 
drug-free workplace policies, even against employees with valid 
medical marijuana cards, passed in the Senate but faltered in the House.

That was a sensible bill and deserves a second chance in the special 
session that begins today. Instead, however, the House Business and 
Labor Committee has put forth a much narrower bill that would give 
employers the option to regulate medical pot users in only the most 
dangerous of jobs.

This is a bad bill that will make Oregon's flawed law worse, not 
better. By giving employers discretion on accommodating medical 
marijuana use only by workers doing "hazardous duties," the bill 
would create a huge uncovered class of workers who would win the 
implicit right to accommodation at work -- something the original act 
explicitly did not grant.

In other words, this new bill is a Trojan horse. It would exempt such 
dangerous jobs as mining, logging and blasting, while creating the 
right to special accommodation for everyone else who might have 
marijuana cards, including surgeons, bus drivers, nannies and 
editorial writers.

Legislators should spike this bill. Instead, they should pass Senate 
Bill 465, clarifying the right of employers to enforce drug-free 
workplace policies.

And while they're at it, they should fund a Justice Department study 
of what increasingly appears to be widespread abuse of a 
well-intentioned medical marijuana law gone bad. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake