“This may mainly be a primary step to having legal guidelines on the books to guard individuals who have medical marijuana playing cards.”
By Wesley Muller, Louisiana Illuminator
State companies in Louisiana might quickly be prohibited from firing employees who use medical marijuana.
The Louisiana Home Labor Committee will consider a invoice on Thursday that might prohibit the state from subjecting staff or potential staff to any adverse penalties primarily based solely on a constructive drug check for marijuana if the employee makes use of the drug on the advice of a doctor.
House Bill 988, sponsored by Rep. Mandie Landry, (D), wouldn’t apply to non-public employers or native authorities, together with legislation enforcement companies. Landry stated her invoice is unlikely to outlive the highly effective enterprise and legislation enforcement lobbyists within the State Capitol, so she restricted it to public employers on the state degree.
“This may mainly be a primary step to having legal guidelines on the books to guard individuals who have medical marijuana playing cards,” Landry stated.
Landry stated medical marijuana sufferers are nonetheless being terminated from jobs or turned away as job candidates because of drug testing.
“The businesses that do the testing don’t know what to do with a constructive marijuana end result so that they ship it to the company, and from what I perceive, every state of affairs is dealt with individually,” she stated.
Medical marijuana grew to become authorized in Louisiana in 2016, however this system has gotten off to a sluggish begin. Costs for the drug stay inflated far past road worth as lawmakers proceed to type via regulatory bottlenecks, nuanced authorized ambiguities and employment rules surrounding drug exams.
The legalization legislation initially required docs to carry a particular license in an effort to prescribe the drug. Lawmakers later eliminated the particular license requirement and adjusted the phrase “prescribe” to “advocate,” bypassing any pink tape from the State Board of Medical Examiners.
Now, any licensed doctor in good standing can deal with sufferers with medicinal hashish by writing a advice that the affected person can take to a dispensary, although the legislation nonetheless solely offers for 10 pharmacy licenses to dispense it and solely 9 licenses have been issued.
Solely the tutorial agriculture facilities at LSU and Southern College, alongside their personal contractors, are approved to develop and domesticate the plant to produce the dispensaries.
One of many greatest chokepoints has been the testing and approval of hashish merchandise earlier than they’re offered to dispensaries and any gear used to domesticate, course of or put together these merchandise. At present, the Louisiana Division of Agriculture and Forestry points all cultivation licenses and exams all hashish merchandise earlier than they are often offered.
Annoyed by the sluggish rollout, Home lawmakers have launched payments to transfer that licensing authority to the Louisiana Division of Well being and remove the limit on cultivation licenses. A type of payments, by Rep. Tanner Magee (R), cleared the Home and is pending within the Senate.
Different laws would expand the number of pharmacy licenses from 10 to twenty. That invoice stays pending on the Home flooring calendar.
This story was first published by Louisiana Illuminator.
Photograph courtesy of Martin Alonso.