At the Mayor & Council meeting last Tuesday, we had a close vote on a change to the drug policy for City employees. The proposed change ended random testing for cannabis and THC products (marijuana, etc.) for some employees. The Council deadlocked 3-3, and the Mayor cast the tiebreaking vote in favor.
I was one of the three opposed. I am sympathetic to the change’s overall goal and supported exploring it when the idea was first discussed. But, ultimately, I was not convinced that the revised policy would work well in practice.
First, what the change doesn’t do: It doesn’t end random drug testing. All employees will still be randomly tested for cocaine, opioids, amphetamines, etc. It also doesn’t allow police officers to use cannabis. Cops and employees who are regulated by the federal Department of Transportation (mainly commercial driver’s license holders) will still have random tests for cannabis.
It also doesn’t allow City employees to use cannabis on the job or come to work high. If a supervisor has a reasonable suspicion that an employee is impaired at work, that employee can be tested for cannabis and face disciplinary action if positive. Employees that are involved in an accident will be tested for cannabis and can face discipline if they come back hot.
So far, fine, in my view. Recreational cannabis is legal now in Maryland and 23 other states. It’s on the path to being treated like alcohol. The policy change would give employees some space to use it in their downtime, so long as they don’t show up to work high. That’s individual liberty, along with the individual responsibility to use it in a safe way that doesn’t interfere with work.
The problem is the test. There is currently no reliable way to test for cannabis impairment. You can detect THC in blood and urine, but it can linger up to a month—well after the person was high. That can put employees and the City in a Catch-22 situation. An employee could be completely sober, get in an accident, get tested, come up hot, and face the possibility of getting fired because he or she smoked weed on the weekend or has a medical THC prescription that he/she takes in the evenings. There would likely be public pressure to come down hard on the employee in that scenario.
The counterargument is that it’s clear from the policy that sort of situation could happen, and employees will know they are taking a risk if they use cannabis on their personal time. True enough. But what turned me away from it is that the revised policy sends a mixed message, even though City supervisors will do their best to avoid that. Ending random testing for cannabis inevitably sends a signal that it’s ok for employees to use it. But the inability to test for impairment means they could still get punished for using it, even if they used it responsibly. As a practical policy matter, I think that’s too murky.
I was in the Army in Alaska from 2013-2016, when cannabis was legalized there. I had to tell my soldiers, “Weed is legal here, but not for you.” It was strict, but clear and fair. Likewise here, I preferred to keep in place the strict but clear expectation that City employees are prohibited from using cannabis while working for Brunswick (with some tailored exceptions for medical use). I’d have come down differently if we had a reliable test for impairment. Cannabis legalization at the federal level would also tip the scale for me, since at that point I wouldn’t see much sense in swimming against the tide.
That said, I was outvoted on this one. Now that the change has been made, I think there are some things that could refine the policy, such as considering whether there was a reasonable suspicion of impairment when making disciplinary decisions for positive post-accident tests. Regardless, with luck, the scenarios that concern me won’t come up often, and I am confident the Mayor and City staff will do their best to implement the revised policy in a reasonable, evenhanded way.
You can read the revised policy here, beginning on page 22.