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Occasional marijuana smokers should not be treated as disabled
By Hempology | January 7, 2008
Edmonton Sun, AB
01 Jan 2008
Glenn Kauth
POT USERS SLAMMED IN RULING
Employer Justified In Firing Worker Over Positive Drug-Test Result
Alberta’s top court has dealt a blow to the province’s pot smokers with a ruling upholding workplace drug-testing policies that were at risk.
In a new decision from the Alberta Court of Appeal, a trio of judges overturned a controversial ruling from Justice Sheilah Martin that drew scorn from 2006 Tory leadership candidate Ted Morton. In that case, Martin ruled that a Fort McMurray employer discriminated against a worker named John Chiasson by firing him over a positive drug-test result.
The case turned on the question of whether Chiasson’s use of marijuana in 2002 qualified him as disabled and whether, as a result, his employer had a duty to accommodate his condition.
While Chiasson himself admitted he was only a casual user of the drug, Martin accepted that in firing everyone who tests positive for drugs, engineering and construction company Kellog, Brown and Root ( KBR ) had essentially treated him as though he were an addict and therefore disabled.
As a result, the company had a duty to be more flexible in its testing policies by, for example, allowing for a wash-out period that would let recreational drug users get the drug out of their blood, Martin ruled. The theory was that occasional smokers don’t necessarily pose a safety risk at work.
The Court of Appeal judges, however, ruled otherwise.
“Extending human rights protections to situations resulting in placing the lives of others at risk flies in the face of logic,” they wrote, noting that despite Chiasson’s insistence that his drug use was his business, the effects of marijuana can linger for days.
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