MEDICAL POT LAW NEEDS A FIX

Oregon's medical marijuana law needs to be clarified in view of the
latest court decision. The Supreme Court may do so eventually, but it
would be better - more democratic - for the legislature to perform that chore.

In early 2005 the state Supreme Court ruled against a worker who had
been fired from a forest-products plant because he used medical marijuana.

In a different case, however, the Bureau of Labor and Industries
ruled in favor of a worker, a drill press operator, who had been
hired as a temporary and who was let go in 2003 when he disclosed his
medical marijuana use. The labor bureau ruled that his employer had
to make a reasonable accommodation of his disability, which was that
he was smoking pot off the job to relieve his nausea and stomach cramps.

Last week the court of appeals turned down an appeal by the employer,
Emerald Steel Fabricators Inc. in Eugene, from the BOLI decision. The
court upheld BOLI, saying the company had not followed the correct
procedure in bringing up its main points.

This man had been hired for a temporary job, and the company's
practice was to require a drug test before offering to keep someone
on long term. After doing the job for a while, the employee disclosed
that he had a medical marijuana card and wondered whether this would
affect his chance of being kept on. His supervisor took the case to
the owner, and shortly afterward the man was told he would no longer be needed.

There are two sides here, as anyone can see, and they conflict.

One side is that free citizens should have a right to keep their
private life private, not just from the government but from their
employers as well. As long as they show up on time and handle the job
satisfactorily, what they do on their own time is nobody else's
business. To accept something less is to grant that employers can
also check up on whether you smoke tobacco at home, whether you have
a drink now and then, and ultimately how dangerous your habits and
hobbies are to your health, because this might affect the company's
benefit costs.

The other side is that employers do have a legitimate interest in
making sure their workers - especially drill press operators working
around heavy machinery - are not impaired by the lingering effects of
substances that may dull their senses. Otherwise the company runs the
risk of people getting injured or even killed, and of the company
then being sued, not to mention cited for safety violations.

The legislature could clear all that up. To protect employers, it
could declare that medical marijuana is not protected as a
disability. And to protect our privacy rights, it could say that
employers can require drug tests, but not routinely, only for cause.