GROWTH IN MEDICAL MARIJUANA RAISES QUESTIONS

GLENWOOD SPRINGS -- With the boom in medical marijuana dispensaries
in the Roaring Fork Valley, area schools and businesses find
themselves struggling to update their policies to address a question
they never had to deal with before. How do you handle a student, or
an employee, who shows up stoned -- with a prescription?

State law allows marijuana use to treat medical conditions. Federal
law doesn't. Unlike alcohol use, medical marijuana use can start at
18 -- or even younger with parents' consent. And also unlike alcohol,
since marijuana is legal within a context of medicine, some users
feel they're not only allowed to use it, but they have to use it.

"There's really no case law on this issue yet," said Brad Stauffer,
spokesman for the Colorado Association of School Boards, which tracks
state issues for school districts. "Nobody's resolved the case law
between the state law and the federal law."

CASB recommends schools treat students who intend to use medical
marijuana in school the same as they treat other students with
special medical needs. That could mean having them take classes at
home, Stauffer said.

"This is a dilemma we're trying to look at now," said Aspen School
District Superintendent Diana Sirko. "If something is prescribed,
where does that fall in our alcohol and drug policy? We don't have
any answers right now other than to say we're examining it."

No specific cases have arisen yet, Sirko said, "but we know we need
to be prepared to respond to any situation."

Glenwood Springs High School Principal Paul Freeman said for him, the
question is a "non-issue." Prescription or not, students using
marijuana aren't allowed in school.

"It puts me in mind of when I injured my back last year and was
prescribed three kinds of drugs: a relaxant, an anti-inflammatory and
a painkiller," Freeman said. "I wasn't in any shape to be anywhere
other than in the safe confines of my house. Any medicine that
interferes with perception renders a student or an adult entirely
incapable of being at work, and being at work, of course, is what
school is for students.

"No student would be permitted to be in the building under the
influence of prescribed medication that interfered with their
perception, and marijuana falls very firmly within that category. In
my view it's so clear it's a non-issue."

It's a little different at a university, though, where school isn't
just where students go to class. It's also where many of them live,
and in the case of freshmen at Colorado Mountain College, where
they're required to live.

There, said spokeswoman Debbie Crawford, the rule is, you can eat it,
but you can't smoke it, in an effort to protect other students from
secondhand smoke.

"The courts are still sorting out the implications of this and where
various laws collide," Crawford said. "At this point, we have a
practice rather than a formal policy."

It's only come up once, she said, after voters approved medical
marijuana use but years before the boom in dispensaries. In that
case, she said, the school allowed the student to use the drug off
campus, but not on campus.

And no sharing with non-prescribed classmates.

"Just like if somebody comes in with a prescription for Valium or
Xanax," Crawford said. "We tell them it's a felony to share
prescription drugs."

What about getting high -- with a prescription -- at work? It's a
question more and more employers are facing, said Daniel C. Wennogle,
an attorney at Balcomb & Green. He's seen big turnouts at seminars on
the topic in Glenwood and Rifle. The Aspen Chamber Resort Association
has one planned April 29, titled "One Toke over the Line."

"A medical marijuana card does not give you a green light to show up
stoned at work," Wennogle said.

The amendment specifies that employers don't have to "accommodate the
medical use of marijuana in any workplace." That gives employers
plenty of leeway in barring their employees from using it at work, he
said. Other sections prevent it from being used in public and in any
way that could "endanger the health or well-being" of another person.
Employees who drive or use heavy equipment at work clearly can be
barred from smoking marijuana at work, even if they have a
prescription. But others probably can be, too.

The amendment "didn't create a civil right to smoke marijuana," he
said. "Therefore, if your employer has a policy that does not allow
drug use by its employees, I don't believe you can turn to the
constitutional amendment and say it gives you a civil right to use
marijuana that your employer can't do anything about."

Can they be fired for lighting up?

"Colorado is an at-will employment state," Wennogle said. "You can
let go of an employee for basically any reason."

But he cautioned that employers who fire an employee based on their
personal opinions about the use of marijuana could be seen as
discriminating against a person with a disability.

Attorney Donald Kaufman urged caution.

"If you terminate someone because they're using marijuana because
they have a chronic back injury, you could argue, hypothetically,
that you're terminating them because of the disability," he said.

Kaufman, who specializes in worker's compensation cases, said about
10 percent of his clients are using medical marijuana. Many seem to
respond better to it than to traditional painkillers, which can be
highly addictive.

"My recommendation is, you treat the medical marijuana user
identically to a patient who is consuming prescription medication,"
Kaufman said.

If the use of any drug endangers the public or impairs their ability
to work, he said, a worker could fairly be fired for using it on the
job. If not, he said, employers could open themselves up to a lawsuit
for firing an employee who was using marijuana to treat a health condition.

"If he's a pilot of an airplane, it's clearly yes [you can fire
him]," Kaufman said. "If he's doing an accounting job and he does the
job perfectly, you can't fire him because it's his constitutional right."