Pubdate: Fri, 27 Jan 2017
Source: Windsor Star (CN ON)
Copyright: 2017 The Windsor Star
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/windsorstar/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/501
Author: Brian Cross
Page: A1

EMPLOYER BALKS AT MEDICAL POT

Worker ponders taking case to human rights commission

Joshua Jacquot says his employer won't allow him during working hours
to take the medication he needs to cope with depression and anxiety
because that medication is medical marijuana.

It's doctor-prescribed and legal, and according to the 23-year-old
assembly line worker, "it seems to be the only thing that works."

But he said when he informed Ventra Assembly several months ago that
he wanted to take it at work, he was told, "no," to use regular
prescribed drugs instead. He said he's already tried them and they
don't help. He went off on sick leave in November, he said, and
continues to fight, because he can't use the medication he needs at
work.

"I'm frustrated, I'm angry, I'm upset," he said, insisting that if
he's allowed to use his weed, he won't be high on the job.

He would use a strain of medical marijuana with low levels of THC, the
"psychoactive" compound in marijuana, and high levels of CBD,
marijuana's other active compound. And to comply with no-smoking
legislation, he would take capsules or cannabis oil.

"They would allow me to have Percocets or fentanyl (prescription
opioids) at work, but they're not going to allow me to have medical
marijuana with high CBD," said Jacquot. "I'm not saying I want to
smoke weed every five minutes, but I need it to deal with my
depression, I want to be able to use it."

Officials from the Lauzon Parkway company declined to comment on
claims by Jacquot, who said he only began working there last year. For
several years before that, he smoked weed recreationally and learned
how much it helped with his depression and anxiety, he said.

His family doctor prescribed him medical marijuana last fall. Jacquot
decided to "do the right thing " and tell his employer he would be
taking it, he said, instead of keeping things discreet.

On Thursday, Jacquot was mulling making a complaint to the Ontario
Human Rights Commission. A spokeswoman for the Human Rights Legal
Support Centre, Jennifer Ramsay, said there's been an increasing
number of cases like Jacquot's coming to human rights tribunals across
the country as the use of medical marijuana becomes increasingly mainstream.

The province's Human Rights Code requires that employers accommodate
any medical treatment, "including the use of marijuana, that an
individual requires in order to access services or to be a productive
member of the workplace," a recent Ontario Bar Association report on
the issue says. It often comes down to a balance between the
employee's right to be accommodated and an employer's obligation to
ensure safety in the workplace.

Ramsay said an employer can't make a blanket prohibition on what drugs
an employee can take. At the same time, the employer can make the case
that a worker who's high at work would endanger himself and others.

"Even then, the employer would have to prove it is a matter of health
and safety with evidence to back that up," she said.

 From a medical perspective, if a person needs to take a medication,
the employer has to allow it, said Dr. Christopher Blue, a Windsor
family physician who prescribes medical marijuana. But he added that
doesn't give an employee the right to be high at work.

"You can take your medication, but if it alters your judgment and
alters your performance you shouldn't be taking it at work," said
Blue, who believes that medical marijuana can be a better alternative
in some cases to drugs such as opioids. But it still carries the
social stigma that you're taking it to get high.

"Why are opiates and fentanyl and Oxycontins and all that stuff OK,
but this stuff is not? There's kind of a double standard there," he
said.

He noted there are strains of marijuana that have no recreational
benefit at all.

Megan McCrae, the marketing director of Leamington-based medical
marijuana firm Aphria, said prescribing physicians can recommend their
patients use certain strains that help with their particular symptoms
without any psychoactive effect.
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MAP posted-by: Matt