Medical pot users need job protection in California: Opinion of Starbulletin.com

OUR OPINION

Medical pot users need job protection
THE ISSUE
The California Supreme Court has ruled that employers may fire workers
for using doctor-prescribed marijuana for medical purposes.

THE latest threat to ailing people who use doctor-recommended
marijuana to ease their pain comes from a strange ruling by the
California Supreme Court. The court ruled that employers may fire
workers for using marijuana for medical purposes, which will prompt
legislation to undo the ruling's damage. As one of 11 states that have
legalized medical use of cannabis, Hawaii should enact similar
workplace protections.

In a 5-2 ruling last week, the California high court upheld the firing
Gary Ross, a former Air Force mechanic who used marijuana to ease the
pain from injuries to his lower back in a fall off an airplane in
1983. A doctor prescribed the marijuana, but the court ruled that
California's legalization of marijuana deals with criminal
prosecution, not terms of employment.

Laws allowing medical use of marijuana were approved by California
voters in 1996 and by the Hawaii Legislature four years later. As many
as a thousand Hawaii residents have been registered with the state to
use marijuana to treat their illnesses.

Those laws have been attacked by the Bush administration, which won a
U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2005 that subjects medical marijuana
users to prosecution. However, that decision does not cover workplace
rules.

The telecommunications company that fired Ross argued that it feared a
raid by federal authorities. A state assemblyman from San Francisco
said he plans to introduce a bill to provide medical marijuana users
some workplace protections.

Left over from last year's Hawaii Legislature is a bill that would
expand the use of medical marijuana and restrict physicians' role to
conform with court rulings. While the California ruling does not apply
to Hawaii, a precautionary provision providing workplace-protection
should be attached to that bill and enacted into law.

California Supreme Court rules Medical Marijuana Users can be fired by employers just for being a MM card holder.

Calif. Court: Medical Pot Not OK at Work

By PAUL ELIAS – 3 days ago

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Employers can fire workers who use medical
marijuana even if it was legally recommended by a doctor, the
California Supreme Court ruled Thursday, dealing the state another
setback in its standoff with federal law enforcement.

The high court upheld a small Sacramento telecommunications company's
firing of a man who flunked a company-ordered drug test. Gary Ross
held a medical marijuana card authorizing him to use the drug to treat
a back injury sustained while serving in the Air Force.

The company, Ragingwire Inc., argued that it rightfully fired Ross
because all marijuana use is illegal under federal law, which does not
recognize the medical marijuana laws in California and 11 other
states.

The justices upheld that argument in a 5-2 decision.

"No state law could completely legalize marijuana for medical purposes
because the drug remains illegal under federal law," Justice Kathryn
Werdegar wrote for the majority.

The U.S. Supreme Court declared in 2005 that state medicinal marijuana
laws don't protect users from prosecution. The Drug Enforcement
Administration and other federal agencies have been actively shutting
down major medical marijuana dispensaries throughout California over
the last two years and charging their operators with felony
distribution charges.

Ragingwire said it fired Ross because it feared it could be the target
of a federal raid, among other reasons.

The Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority and the Western
Electrical Contractors Association Inc. had joined Ragingwire's case,
arguing that companies could lose federal contracts and grants if they
allowed employees to smoke pot.

The conservative nonprofit Pacific Legal Foundation said in a
friend-of-the-court filing that employers could also be liable for
damage done by high workers.

Ross had argued that medical marijuana users should receive the same
workplace protection from discipline that employees with valid
painkiller prescriptions do. California voters legalized medicinal
marijuana in 1996.

The nonprofit marijuana advocacy group Americans for Safe Access,
which represents Ross, estimates that 300,000 Americans use medical
marijuana. The Oakland-based group said it has received hundreds of
employee discrimination complaints in California since it began
tracking the issue in 2005.

Safe Access attorney Joe Elford said the group will now focus on
urging the Legislature to pass a law protecting workers who use
medical marijuana.

"We remain confident that there will be a day when medical marijuana
patients are not discriminated against in the workplace," he said.

Assemblyman Mark Leno, a Democrat who represents part of San
Francisco, said he will introduce legislation addressing those
concerns in the next few weeks.

The ruling "strikes a serious blow to patients' rights," he said.

Eleven states have adopted medical-marijuana laws similar to
California's: Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nevada, New
Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.

The American Medical Association advocates keeping marijuana
classified as a tightly controlled and dangerous drug that should not
be legalized until more research is done.

Reefer Madness, an artcile by Alex Nikolic

Source: http://www.westcoaster.ca/modules/AMS/article.php?storyid=3521

Reefer Madness

Published Date: 2008/1/28 0:10:00
Article ID : 3521
Version 1.00

By Alex Nikolic
Columnist

It has nothing to do with getting high. In reality, Canada's drug
policy is written in Washington and has everything to do with socially
conservative political manipulation, and money.
It is little more than controlling, intimidating and marginalizing
otherwise respectable and law-abiding citizens and infringing on the
basic freedoms and rights of the general population.
Until 1906, marijuana and hemp was cultivated for the production of
clothing, sails, ropes and medicine.
There was nothing illegal about it, but it did cut into the profits of
rich white people.
William Randolph Hearst had significant interests in the timber
industry, which manufactured newsprint for his many newspapers,
something that hemp had been used for until then.
DuPont had also patented a process that converted fossil fuels into
plastics, something that hemp-seed oil had been used for until then.
After losing nearly a million acres of prime timberland to Pancho
Villa, Hearst engaged in a campaign that portrayed Mexican immigrants
as violent, lazy, degenerate, job-stealing pot smokers.
The money behind DuPont, Andrew Mellon, was also Herbert Hoover's
Treasury Secretary. He appointed the US's first Drug Czar, Harry
Anslinger who proceeded to demonize marijuana by employing such
rhetoric as "Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men …
Marijuana leads to pacifism and communist brainwashing ... the primary
reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races …This
marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes."
Not much has changed.
Drug laws based on this fear-mongering propaganda and racist
yellow-journalism are still enforced today. Instead of addressing the
world's largest demand for narcotics in its own backyard, the US
amerrogantly sends the DEA into developing countries to eradicate the
coca crops of Bolivia and opium fields of Thailand and Afghanistan,
destroying the livelihoods of farmers who have grown these crops for
centuries longer than the US has existed.
Of course, Canada's current batch of "leaders" continues to do the
bidding of American petrochemical companies and backward-thinking
scaredy-cats that have come up with their own rationalized
justifications.
Let's explore two of these myths: that marijuana is a "gateway drug"
for more destructive substance abuse, and that criminals use the
profits from pot sales for purchasing guns and cocaine.
It would be difficult to find a politician insensitive enough to deny
the use of medicinal marijuana to cancer-patients undergoing
chemotherapy. If marijuana is a "gateway drug," why aren't these
people getting hooked on heroin and crack? If they aren't jumping
through the "gateway," why would anyone else?
Undeniably, criminals are buying guns and cocaine with the profits
from marijuana sales. Pot is as guaranteed a commodity market as
anyone could find. It's the same thing Prohibition did for Capone and
his friends. However, if pot were controlled in the same way as
alcohol and tobacco, the government would be making the profits and
the criminals would lose their most lucrative means to carry out real
crimes. Marijuana laws fuel organized crime.
In 2003, Nanaimo-Alberni MP James Lunney introduced Bill C-420 that
would "place natural health products under a food directorate, rather
than as a subclass of drugs." He also recently commented that "our
government has no intention to decriminalize marijuana"
The irony extends beyond the name of the bill. Last I heard cannabis
and hemp could be grown naturally. And, if marijuana isn't a health
product, why does Health Canada grant access to marijuana for medical
use? It seems Mr. Lunney is advocating declassifying pot as a drug.
Perhaps he is more progressive than I may have imagined, despite the
Conservatives dropping the term from their name.
Nonetheless, here we are today, bowing to the Bush administration by
extraditing Marc Emery to be prosecuted under the US's archaic and
draconian laws. At the same time, we won't kick up too much of a fuss
about the US executing one of our own citizens. Meanwhile, handguns
remain legal in Canada. Where, oh where, are our priorities and
sovereignty?
If we were to decriminalize pot and treat it the way we do alcohol and
tobacco, imagine the money taxpayers would save by collecting the
taxes and diverting resources from law enforcement and correctional
facilities towards truly pressing matters such as health care and
education.
What nonsense to criminalize something that God has seen fit to plant
on His green earth! It is the chemicals used to process opium into
heroin, or coca into cocaine, that should be illegal rather than
naturally occurring plants. I wonder what DuPont would say about that.
Because it's all about money and has nothing to do with getting high.

Positive Letters in National Post about Medicinal Marijuana

SOURCE:http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/story.html?id=268202

Another recurring topic on the letters page is legalizing marijuana.
Last week we carried a passionate letter from a woman who said that
"drugs stole my brother's life and dignity [leaving him with] HIV/AIDS
and serious nerve damage." She blamed pot for being the gateway drug
that led to his other drug-related problems. That statement did not
sit well with many other readers.

"On behalf or the millions of Canadians who have smoked pot, it must
be noted that at least 99.9% of us don't wind up as junkies, and have
never used needles, except when given inoculations or blood tests,"
wrote Barry Samuels. "The one and only problem with marijuana is that
it remains illegal, despite its beneficial medical uses and relative
harmlessness."

"Numerous studies prove conclusively that marijuana is not a gateway
drug, since the vast majority of marijuana users do not use hard
drugs," added George Kosinski. "If drug policy in the United States
and Canada were based on fact, and drug education were based on the
actual effects of drugs rather than the ideology of drug prohibition,
perhaps your letter-writer's brother would have been wise enough to
restrict himself to marijuana."

We also heard from a handful of people who rely on marijuana to treat
their medical conditions.

"I am a retired law enforcement officer, disabled from chronic,
progressive multiple sclerosis and an excruciating pain in my face,"
wrote Alison Myrden. "As of October, 2007, 2,261 people in Canada
carry a licence for cannabis, the so-called 'gateway drug.' I can tell
you that all cannabis consumers should take offence to this letter.
Doctors gave me cocaine and heroin for the pain I live with, but the
drug that helped me most was cannabis sativa. Now, does that not blow
this 'gateway theory' out of the water?" - Earlier this month I
offered letter writers 10 tips on how to improve their chances of
publication. One was to not send the same letter to multiple
publications, as we all desire exclusivity. Here's proof that readers
also value that attribute.