Pubdate: Tue, 24 Mar 2015
Source: Gazette, The (Colorado Springs, CO)
Copyright: 2015 The Gazette
Contact: http://www.gazette.com/sections/opinion/submitletter/
Website: http://www.gazette.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/165
Authors: Pula Davis, Wayne Laugesen, Christine Tatum
Series: Special report, 'Clearing the Haze:'

DRUG USE A PROBLEM FOR EMPLOYERS

Two families with deep Colorado roots - the Johnsons of Colorado 
Springs and the Haseldens of Centennial - have built rival commercial 
construction companies, each employing hundreds of people and 
reporting hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue. In 
business, they are practically sworn enemies.

But there is at least one issue where the Haseldens and the Johnsons 
are in agreement and encourage key members of their staffs to 
collaborate: construction safety. It is of paramount importance, and 
all of their employees must be drug-free.

"I'll get straight to the bottom line," said Rick Reubelt, Haselden 
Construction's director of environmental health and safety. "If 
you're in the construction industry, marijuana use is not acceptable 
at any time, under any circumstance or condition."

"He couldn't have said it better," said Jim Johnson, GE Johnson's 
chief executive officer. "We endorse that stance, and this is one 
thing we absolutely unite on."

Company hires out of state

Johnson said his company has encountered so many job candidates who 
have failed pre-employment drug tests because of their THC use that 
it is actively recruiting construction workers from other states.

The dwindling candidate pool especially affected GE Johnson during 
its trumpeted, $57 million renovation of the luxurious Broadmoor 
hotel's West Tower in late 2013. The company had such a tough time 
staffing required shifts that Johnson said his team decided to 
abandon local job-recruitment efforts, pay current workers plenty of 
overtime wages and look outside Colorado for drug-free employees.

"This is a very troublesome issue for our industry, but I do not see 
us bending or lowering our hiring standards," Johnson said. "Our 
workplaces are too dangerous and too dynamic to tolerate drug use. 
And marijuana? In many ways, this is worse than alcohol. I'm still in 
shock at how we (Colorado) voted. Everyone was asleep at the wheel."

Since Colorado's 2009 boom in medical marijuana dispensaries and 2012 
vote sanctioning the psychoactive drug's recreational use, many of 
the state's employers have had to confront marijuana's growing impact 
on their budgets, operations and staffing.

So far, the prevailing interpretations of Colorado's state amendments 
sanctioning marijuana use have sided with the rights of employers to 
terminate employees who use the drug even if their use is off the 
clock and premises and/or part of a healthcare regimen.

Marijuana-using workers are challenging those restrictions, claiming 
their employers have no right to regulate what they do during their 
free time. Though the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not 
approved THC as a safe and effective drug for any condition, 
employees are using arguments of medical necessity against employers 
who don't tolerate marijuana use.

Hard to test lingering effect

Legal skirmishes also center on employee drug testing. 
Marijuana-using workers and lawyers representing the marijuana 
industry argue that a positive test showing low levels of THC does 
not meet the burden for proving impairment on the job. Unlike 
alcohol, marijuana can remain in a user's system for weeks. A heavy 
user who stops using can test positive for the next 60 days or more.

Therein lies a dilemma for workplace safety professionals like 
Reubelt. An employee who drinks over the weekend can be sober and 
safe to work on Monday. In the event of a workplace incident, it is 
relatively easy to determine whether alcohol was a factor.

Not so with marijuana. If an employee tests positive for low levels 
of THC, Reubelt said, it is nearly impossible to rule out impairment 
as a cause.

The company maintains a 100-vehicle fleet that travels the Rocky 
Mountain region, and Reubelt said he must be able to determine 
whether drivers are working under the influence.

"I don't think it's right to expect employers to deal with 
ticking-time-bomb situations like these," Reubelt said. "The science 
is not available to show exactly how someone is affected by the 
marijuana they've used . . . marijuana isn't voided from the body 
like alcohol... ."

Reubelt also worries about employees easily concealing their use of 
THC. A powerful concentration of the drug can be infused into 
brownies, cookies, candies and other food products that can be openly 
consumed without raising a red flag.

Reubelt said it's all a threat to the bottom line. If an employee 
causes injury or death and then tests positive for THC, he believes 
the employer will pay.

"It'll be a company owner long before it's an individual employee," he said.

While numbers show marijuana use is on the rise in Colorado, the 
state has not reported the drug's impact on dynamics important to 
employers, such as absenteeism, accidents and worker's compensation claims.

However, the number of workers nationwide who tested positive for 
marijuana jumped 6.2 percent from 2012 to 2013, according to the 
Quest Diagnostics Drug Testing Index. And the number of positive 
tests was dramatically higher among workers in Colorado (up 20 
percent) and Washington state (up 23 percent). It was the first 
national spike in positive drug test rates recorded in 10 years - and 
one attributed largely to the use of marijuana and amphetamines.

Substance-abusing workers are more costly for companies than their 
drug-free colleagues.

A U.S. Postal Service study found that absenteeism is 66 percent 
higher among substance-abusing workers. The U.S. Department of Labor 
cites multiple studies showing higher use of health benefits among 
substance-abusing employees. It also found lower turnover among 
companies with substance abuse programs that include drug testing.

Small business especially hurt

Small businesses bear the brunt of workplace drug problems, the 
Department of Labor reports.

"I see it all the time," said Jo McGuire, a Colorado Springs-based 
consultant who helps employers promote and maintain drug-free work 
environments and serves on the national board of the Drug and Alcohol 
Testing Industry Association.

"Small businesses often feel as if they don't have the money to 
conduct regular, random drug testing programs, and they're willing to 
gamble that they won't need them," McGuire said. "But they really do 
need them because they're losing a lot more productivity and wasting 
far many more resources than they often realize. And if an accident 
happens, they're likely to be financially destroyed."

Even without data from the state, Leona Wellener, owner of Front 
Range Staffing in Colorado Springs, said marijuana use has 
compromised the state's workforce. In February, Wellener said, more 
than half the applicants who came to her company looking for work 
failed the required drug tests because of THC use.

Wellener said she's also seeing more people trying to cheat drug 
tests by passing off substances that are not their urine. Her firm 
has started asking people to take drug tests soon after walking in 
the company's door for the first time.

"I'm not wasting my time and money or my clients' time and money on 
people who use marijuana," she said. "If you can't pass a drug test 
right away, then we don't even want to interview you."

Chuck Marting, owner of Fort Morgan-based Colorado Mobile Drug 
Testing, urges his clients - and all Colorado business owners - to 
adopt clearly defined rules like Wellener's and apply them consistently.

Doing so, he explained, can preclude charges of discrimination. In 
the event of a workplace accident, evidence of clearly communicated 
and consistently enforced drug policies and testing could help 
employers defend themselves and mitigate financial damages, he said.

Marting also urges employers to avoid the misperception that everyone 
is using marijuana. He points to the 2013 National Survey on Drug Use 
and Health, which shows that a minority of American workers report 
illicit drug use.

"It's obviously not everyone, but those numbers will grow if 
employers don't set firm limits and stick to them," said Marting, who 
worked in law enforcement as a drug recognition expert for 17 years.

Marting said employees who do not use drugs urged one of his clients 
to begin administering drug tests. They were concerned about 
continual "screw-ups" by stoned co-workers.

"All of this is going to catch up with Colorado - and our country," 
Marting said.

[sidebar]

Day 3: YOUTHFUL ADDICTION

Protecting our children was a priority as the public headed to the 
polls to vote on Amendment 64. The most recent research on adolescent 
brain development and related addiction studies indicates this is 
more important than ever thought before. Adolescent exposure to 
marijuana is most troubling because young users are more vulnerable 
to addiction throughout their lives. Post-legalization trends in 
Colorado raise concerns because regulation has fallen short of the 
promises made by the state. The increasing rate of pot use also is a 
concern of employers.

About the series

The reporting team: editorial board members Pula Davis and Wayne 
Laugesen and local reporter Christine Tatum.

After the first year of recreational pot sales, The Gazette takes a 
comprehensive look at the unintended consequences of legalizing sales 
and use of recreational marijuana.

Day 1: Colorado has a fragile scheme for regulating legal marijuana 
and implementing a state drug prevention strategy.

Day 2: One of the suppositions about legalizing pot was that 
underground sales would be curtailed, but officials say there is 
evidence of a thriving black market.

Day 3: One teen's struggle to overcome his marijuana addiction shows 
how devastating the effects of the drug can be for younger, more 
vulnerable users.

Day 4: Amid the hoopla about recreational marijuana sales, the 
medical marijuana industry is flourishing and has its own set of 
complicated concerns.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom