In Republican-led states like Montana, Nebraska, Ohio and South Dakota, lawmakers are seeking to either repeal or significantly roll back voter-approved legalization laws. In Democrat-led states like California, Maryland, Michigan and New Jersey, lawmakers are seeking to undermine existing legalization markets by drastically hiking marijuana-related taxes.

In all cases, elected officials are treating cannabis consumers as targets, not constituents.

These concerted attacks on state-legal marijuana markets are an explicit reminder that the war on cannabis and its consumers remains ongoing and, in some cases, is escalating. Our opponents haven’t gone away; in many cases they’ve simply regrouped and tweaked their strategies—such as by advocating for arbitrary THC potency caps or calling for new criminal penalties for consumers who don’t obtain their cannabis from state-licensed dispensaries.

No longer convinced that they can win the hearts and minds of voters, they are now frequently seeking to remove them from the equation altogether.

Those who oppose legalization have also become bolder and more cynical in their tactics. No longer convinced that they can win the hearts and minds of voters, they are now frequently seeking to remove them from the equation altogether.

Earlier this year, Republican lawmakers in South Dakota sought to repeal the state’s voter-initiated medical cannabis access law, despite 70 percent of voters having approved it. The effort failed, but only by a single vote.

In Nebraska, lawmakers are also considering legislation to roll back that state’s voter-approved medical marijuana law and the state’s Republican attorney general has urged lawmakers to ignore the election results altogether.

In Ohio, GOP lawmakers in the Senate recently approved legislation to rescind many of the legalization provisions approved by voters in 2023. Changes advanced by lawmakers include limiting home-cultivation rights, imposing THC potency limits and creating new crimes for adults who share cannabis with one another or who purchase cannabis products from out of state.

In Texas, Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued several cities, including Dallas, for implementing voter-approved ordinances decriminalizing marijuana possession. As a result, local lawmakers in various municipalities—including Lockhart and Bastrop—are ignoring voters’ decisions to rethink their marijuana policies rather than face potential litigation.

And in Idaho, where the governor just signed mandatory minimum penalties into law for low-level marijuana possession, lawmakers are pushing for a constitutional amendment forbidding voters from weighing in on any future ballot measure to legalize marijuana.

Change only occurs when advocates agitate for it, and when elected officials fear political consequences.

But attacks on cannabis consumers are not limited solely to traditionally red states. Currently, several Democratic governors are pushing to balance their budget deficits on the backs of consumers.

For instance, Gov. Phil Murphy (D) has proposed raising New Jersey marijuana-related taxes nearly five-fold. A Maryland budget proposal seeks to nearly double the special sales tax consumers’ pay on retail marijuana purchases. These proposed increases, if enacted, will not only lighten consumers’ wallets, but also hurt state-licensed businesses.

As lawmakers push marijuana prices artificially higher, many consumers will exit the legal market and begin patronizing the unregulated marketplace, thereby undermining one of the primary goals of legalization.

Regardless of whether one lives in a red or blue state, or in a jurisdiction where cannabis is legal or illicit, it’s time for the cannabis community to stand up and assert itself. Cannabis consumers are neither criminals nor ATM machines. They are hard-working responsible adults. And they vote.

Now is not the time to become complacent, nor is it a time to presume that marijuana will somehow legalize itself. Change only occurs when advocates agitate for it, and when elected officials fear political consequences for failing to abide by voters’ demands.

Those who support legalizing marijuana are not part of the ideological fringe; we are the majority. It’s time for us to act like it and for lawmakers to treat cannabis consumers with the respect they deserve.

Photograph by Willpower Studios via Flickr/Creative Commons 2.0

This story was originally published by Marijuana Moment, which tracks the politics and policy of cannabis and drugs. Follow Marijuana Moment on X and Facebook, and sign up for its newsletter.

The post State-Level Attacks on Consumers Show Marijuana Won’t Legalize Itself appeared first on Filter.

At issue are federal regulations adopted in 1988, mandating all federally contracted workers to refrain from the use of certain controlled substances, including cannabis. Despite the reality that most state governments have since legalized cannabis use under certain circumstances, neither Congress nor federal regulators have revisited the marijuana-specific provisions of Drug-Free Workplace Act.

These tests are not intended to assess whether drivers are under the influence of cannabis while on the job.

As a result, hundreds of thousands of commercially licensed drivers must routinely undergo random urinalysis screenings for cannabis use to maintain their employment. However, these tests are not intended to assess whether drivers are under the influence of cannabis while on the job. Rather, they are solely designed to detect whether one may have been exposed to cannabis several days, weeks or even months earlier.

That’s because urine screens detect the presence of carboxy-THC—an inert byproduct of cannabis that can remain present in urine for as long as 100 days post-abstinence. Because of this prolonged detection window, the Justice Department has long acknowledged that a positive test result “does not indicate abuse or addiction; recency, frequency, or amount of use; or impairment.”

Over the past several years, truckers and other drivers subjected to these tests have been testing positive in record numbers. Since 2020, over 139,000 truckers have tested positive for past cannabis exposure. That total is far greater than the total number of positives for all other drugs combined. Most of these drivers are refusing to reapply for work in the industry. Tens of thousands of additional drivers are skipping their tests altogether. In all, more than 150,000 licensed drivers have left the profession in recent years because of these zero-tolerance workplace drug testing policies.

Workplace policies, and those that regulate federal workers specifically, must cease punishing employees for activities they engage in during their off-hours.

A change in these discriminatory and counterproductive marijuana drug testing policies is long overdue. These outdated regulations are an artifact of the 1980s drug war zeitgeist. But times have changed; attitudes have changed, and in most states, the marijuana laws have changed. Workplace policies, and those that regulate federal workers specifically, must adapt to this new reality and cease punishing employees for activities they engage in during their off-hours that pose no legitimate workplace safety threat.

Several state governments, including California and New York, as well as major corporations like Amazon, have wisely amended their rules so that most public and private employees may no longer be terminated from their jobs solely because of a positive test for the presence of THC metabolites. In addition, performance-testing technologies like DRUID and Alert Meter are now becoming more widely available for employers who wish to assess whether their employees are actually impaired while at their jobs.

It’s high time that the federal government similarly update and amend its own antiquated marijuana testing regulations in accordance with cannabis’s rapidly changing cultural and legal status.

Photograph by PRA via Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons 3.0

This story was originally published by Marijuana Moment, which tracks the politics and policy of cannabis and drugs. Follow Marijuana Moment on Twitter and Facebook, and sign up for its newsletter.

The post End Discriminatory Marijuana Testing of Trucking Industry Workers appeared first on Filter.