All right, so this is really tongue in cheek. Well, sort of. Having recently read an article on Yahoo News, entitled Marijuana Use By Seniors Goes Up As Boomers Age, I couldn’t help but wonder what most employers would do if they find out through preemployment drug tests that their more senior executives are huffing on the bong, after work. Does it matter? And if so, how do you deal with it? Do you deal with it the same way as you would deal with a younger job candidate?
Imagine as an employer thinking to yourself, “well he brought in umpteen millions of business, is highly respected in this industry, but he smokes pot when he gets home.” So what do you do?
Suppose there is a zero tolerance drug policy. Do you let your Senior Vice President go for smoking marijuana on his or her on time? Interesting questions. As more employers are instituting drug tests as part of their preemployment screening program, this may actually become an issue. I write this of course with the assumption that your senior job applicant his past all other background checks and has neither state criminal records or federal criminal records, largely white collar criminal records in his history.
I wrote this also with the understanding that your senior executives are sharing doobies with the younger members of the staff, during the work hours. I guess the interesting question is does pot use matter all that much? And to whom? I have had one staffing group in the healthcare industry tell me of all the background checks they run on nurses and healthcare workers, the one they care about the least is where is shows positive on the drug test for marijuana. The one client said to me, “if I had to eliminate all the nurses smoking pot, I wouldn’t have enough job candidates to staff a small medical office yet alone a hospital.” This may be hyperbole, but certainly he was making a point.
And then what happens in a state like California where pot is all but legal. At least if your job candidate has a legal permit allowing him to smoke marijuana for medical reasons, then can the employer fire him if he drug test shows positive for marijuana. Hard to say. Whenever I have asked the question, people seem to hem and haw, but no one really seems to know the answer. At least with regard to the people I spoke to about it.
Meanwhile, as the economy attempts to turn around and more boomers remain in the workforce for longer periods, either because they don’t want to retire or can’t afford to retire, then the drug habits most picked up on the sixties are posing whole new issues about drug tests. I would think.