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Omaha Steve

(99,070 posts)
Fri Jan 3, 2014, 10:51 AM Jan 2014

Fired for legally smoking pot: The coming Colorado crackdown


http://www.salon.com/2014/01/03/fired_for_legally_smoking_pot_the_coming_colorado_crackdown/

Friday, Jan 3, 2014 07:30 AM CST

Even if your state starts letting you smoke pot, your boss might not. Here's what happened to Brandon Coats
Josh Eidelson

On New Year’s Day, Colorado became the first state in which it’s legal to recreationally smoke pot. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a fireable offense. Under U.S. law, private companies can fire employees for almost anything they do at home or at work. And while Colorado has bucked the trend by banning firings for “lawful” outside-work activities, that protection doesn’t extend to pot.


Brandon Coats, right, with his attorney, Michael Evans, left. (Credit: AP/Ed Andrieski)

“I’m not going to get better any time soon,” paraplegic plaintiff Brandon Coats told reporters after his 2010 firing by Dish Network was upheld in a precedent-setting Colorado Court of Appeals case last April. “I need the marijuana, and I don’t want to go the rest of my life without holding a job.” As the Denver Post reported, Coats alleged he was illegally fired by the cable company Dish Network for using medical marijuana to mitigate muscle spasms. (Coats was fired three years before Colorado voters legalized recreational marijuana use; his case rested on the state’s Medical Marijuana Amendment, which went into effect in 2009.) Dish did not respond to Salon’s Thursday morning inquiry.

“If Mr. Coats can’t win this case, then nobody can,” Coats’ attorney Michael Evans told Salon. “He’s about as bad as you can get in terms of physical disability … He was a great employee, and they admit that he was never impaired [at work] … He was following all of the laws.”

Evans’ firing and Appeals Court setback have sobering implications for customers of Colorado’s newly legal recreational marijuana industry. In November 2012, Colorado and Washington state became the first U.S. states to legalize non-medical marijuana use (Washington’s law goes into effect later this year). Last August, the U.S. Justice Department announced that – as long as those states implemented “strong and effective regulatory and enforcement systems” regarding their newly legal marijuana industries – it was deferring its right to challenge the new legalization laws, and would continue not to devote federal resources to “prosecuting individuals whose conduct is limited to possession of small amounts of marijuana for personal use on private property.” Legalization advocates hailed those votes, and the feds’ choice not to crack down in response, as a potential tipping point for their cause; Drug Policy Alliance executive director Ethan Nadelmann predicted to Salon last month that “Oregon and possibly other U.S. states will vote to legalize marijuana” in 2014.

FULL story at link.

5 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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Fired for legally smoking pot: The coming Colorado crackdown (Original Post) Omaha Steve Jan 2014 OP
I'm no lawyer JNelson6563 Jan 2014 #1
People get fired for doing legal things all the time. noamnety Jan 2014 #4
Lots of jobs require random drug tests even after you are hired. mn9driver Jan 2014 #2
That's how they getcha. OnyxCollie Jan 2014 #3
Compare with drinking intaglio Jan 2014 #5

JNelson6563

(28,151 posts)
1. I'm no lawyer
Fri Jan 3, 2014, 11:01 AM
Jan 2014

But wouldn't it be illegal to fire someone for doing something legal on their own time? Is anyone being fired for drinking on their own time? No? Why, would it be laughed out of court?

This is discrimination of sorts, isn't it?

Julie

 

noamnety

(20,234 posts)
4. People get fired for doing legal things all the time.
Fri Jan 3, 2014, 12:55 PM
Jan 2014

Paula Deen's comments come to mind, as well as teachers posting photos to facebook of themselves partying, or people getting fired for being gay.

I don't think Colorado is one, but right to work states can fire someone for almost any reason at all, with very specific exclusions like racism.

mn9driver

(4,412 posts)
2. Lots of jobs require random drug tests even after you are hired.
Fri Jan 3, 2014, 11:24 AM
Jan 2014

Federal law requires it of transportation and law endorcement and probably other professions. The tests make no attempt to distinguish between being impaired on the job and off duty use.

intaglio

(8,170 posts)
5. Compare with drinking
Fri Jan 3, 2014, 01:13 PM
Jan 2014

After a night on the razzle most people will be intoxicated to some degree and, in the UK, to dismiss such workers as long as the workers have been informed beforehand. Personally I'm fine with that, I would not want to work in a warehouse with a partially intoxicated fork-lift truck driver or in a welding shop with a woozy welder.

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