Adapting to the Evolving Marijuana Legislation

Obviously we've got in Maryland, marijuana is legal in that state. There's states with medical marijuana, there's varying different state laws and we've always been dealing with that.

But now that there's some changes at the federal level, Russell, what should employers and business owners and people be thinking about as it relates to this law?

But what it does indicate is something that we've been talking about for a while, which is we're moving in this direction. And, I've always talked about it as this continuum of, there's certain hard drugs and employers treat them a certain way. And on the other end of the continuum there's alcohol. And employers treat that usually very differently than they would hard drugs. And, cannabis has been historically treated more like the hard drugs.

And what we're seeing is this erosion of that and to the point where cannabis is becoming more and more treated like alcohol. And, this is just another, to me, like another storm that erodes that a little bit further and gets us a little bit closer to treating it more and more like alcohol.

And again, like that's the, I think, advice we've been giving for a while is, there's safety sensitive jobs where, this doesn't really apply and you still wanna have heightened scrutiny in those types of roles. But for us, in office based jobs, if people are doing things on the weekend, does it really impact the work if they need it for their health, does it really impact the work?

And shifting kind of the employer focus, not from a black and white, you're using it or you're not, type of analysis to, does it affect the workplace? Does it affect your performance? Are you coming to work under the influence?

And that does make it, in addition to the recreational use in comparing to alcohol and that behavioral piece and, so someone might be on painkillers, for instance, right? And they might be legitimately on pain-killers for a good health related reason, but also you have an interest in not having them be impaired at work because they operate machinery, right? And there's ways that you need to navigate that.

So I think there's gonna be some similar things potentially coming down the pipeline as it relates to that with cannabis state by state and maybe at the federal level, just based on some of that feedback. So there's these two buckets that they're examining here. But there are synergies that you can draw between cannabis and things that are already at play in people's handbooks policies and things, which is, prescription drug use, and alcohol use, both with are legal.

Assuming that you meet the criteria to be seen, those substances right.

You still have to look at state by state, and if you're a multi-state employer and you've gotta navigate, potentially having divergent regulations across your platform.