More businesses are mellowing out over hiring pot smokers
Those employers and many others are quietly taking what once would have been a radical step: They're dropping marijuana from the drug tests they require of prospective employees. Marijuana testing — a fixture at large American employers for at least 30 years — excludes too many potential workers, experts say, at a time when filling jobs is more challenging than it's been in nearly two decades.
"It has come out of nowhere," said
Though still in its early stages, the shift away from marijuana testing appears likely to accelerate. More states are legalizing cannabis for recreational use;
And medical marijuana users in
The Trump administration also may be softening its resistance to legal marijuana. Labor Secretary
"We have all these Americans that are looking to work," Acosta said. "Are we aligning our ... drug testing policies with what's right for the workforce?"
There is no definitive data on how many companies conduct drug tests, though the
But interviews with hiring executives, employment lawyers and agencies that help employers fill jobs indicate that dropping marijuana testing is among the steps more companies are taking to expand their pool of applicants to fill a near-record level of openings.
Businesses are hiring more people without high school diplomas, for example, to the point where the unemployment rate for non-high school graduates has sunk more than a full percentage point in the past year to 5.5 percent. That's the steepest such drop for any educational group over that time. On Friday, the government is expected to report another robust jobs report for April.
Excluding marijuana from testing marks the first major shift in workplace drug policies since employers began regularly screening applicants in the late 1980s. They did so after a federal law required that government contractors maintain drug-free workplaces. Many private businesses adopted their own mandatory drug testing of applicants.
Most businesses that have dropped marijuana tests continue to screen for cocaine, opiates, heroin and other drugs. But
"Employers are saying, 'We have a thin labor pool,' "Reidy said. " 'So are we going to test and exclude a whole group of people? Or can we assume some risks, as long as they're not impaired at work?'"
Yet many companies are reluctant to acknowledge publicly that they've dropped marijuana testing.
"This is going to become the new don't ask, don't tell," Reidy said.
In most states that have legalized marijuana, like
Companies in labor-intensive industries — hoteliers and home health care providers and employers with many warehouse and assembly jobs — are most likely to drop marijuana testing. By contrast, businesses that contract with the government or that are in regulated industries, like air travel, or that have safety concerns involving machinery, are continuing marijuana tests, employment lawyers say. Federal regulations require the testing of pilots, train operators and other key transportation workers.
Dropping marijuana testing is more common among employers in the nine states, along with the
After the Drug-Free Workplace Act was enacted in 1988, amid concerns about cocaine use, drug testing spread to most large companies. All Fortune 500 companies now engage in some form of drug testing, according to
In
"It's because unemployment is virtually non-existent" in
That's particularly true in
FPI, a property-management firm in
But it adds, "As it relates to marijuana use, FPI will consider any applicable state law when dispositioning test results."
FPI didn't respond to requests for comment, which isn't unusual given that companies that have dropped marijuana tests aren't exactly billboarding their decisions. Most still seek to maintain drug-free workplaces and still test for harder drugs.
"They're pretty hush-hush about it," Graves said.
"The labor market has tightened up," Cannon said.
Relaxed attitudes among employers are spreading from states where recreational marijuana is legal to those where it's lawful only for medical use, such as
"We have had companies say to us, 'We don't worry about that as much as we used to,'" Petrini said. "We say, 'OK, well, we are still following our standards.' "
One of Reidy's clients, a manufacturer in
The stigma surrounding marijuana use is eroding, compounding pressure on employers to stop testing. Sixty-four percent of Americans support legalizing pot, a Gallup poll found, the highest percentage in a half-century of surveys.
In
Many high-tech companies have been moving from
He estimates that roughly one-tenth of his group's members have stopped testing for marijuana out of frustration.
"They say, 'I have to get people on the casino floor or make the beds, and I can't worry about what they're doing in their spare time,'" Towler said.
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