Dealing with medical marijuana in the workplace

The Vancouver Sun interviewed Mark Haden, a professor at UBC’s school of population and public health, and Mark Thompson, a professor emeritus UBC’s Sauder School of Business, about the challenges of dealing with medical marijuana use in the workplace.

Haden said there should be national policies in place to help guide employers.

“The real issue is impairment testing, and that’s hard to do right now. Urine analysis testing isn’t useful, since marijuana can be detected for 30 days — long after any psychological or physical effect has passed,” he said.

Thompson noted that there is very little case law on the issue.

“Right now the law is very unclear, understandably, since it hasn’t been legalized yet and the number of cases involving medical marijuana are not very numerous,” he said.