One toke over the line
Workers can still be fired for using legal marijuana
In July 2015, recreational marijuana
use will become legal in Oregon for
adults 21 and over. But there’s a hitch:
Adults can use marijuana, but employ-
ers can still fire them for doing it.
Ballot Measure 91, which legalized
recreational marijuana, specifically left
untouched private prohibition by em-
ployers or landlords. Nonunion em-
ployers can impose whatever work-
place drug policies they want. Union
employers must negotiate drug policies
with the union. But under federal law,
employers in transportation and em-
ployers that have federal contracts have
no choice: They must have workplace
drug policies. And under that federal
regulatory regime, marijuana continues
to be one of five tested-for drugs (along
with amphetamines, cocaine, opiates
and PCP).
Paul Loney, a Portland attorney who
specializes in marijuana law, says
workers need to know their employer’s
policy. Some conduct random drug
tests, while others test only after an ac-
cident or on suspicion of intoxication.
And when a test comes back positive,
some discipline or fire an employee,
while others send them for counseling
or treatment.
In hazardous working environ-
ments, it’s reasonable for employers to
want workers to be sober. The problem
is, the standard-issue drug tests don’t
actually show intoxication, Loney says:
“They don’t test for impairment; they
test for metabolites.”
U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore-
gon), one of the biggest advocates of
reforming federal marijuana law, says
employees subject to workplace drug
policies shouldn’t risk sanctions in the
workplace. But he thinks federal mari-
juana prohibition will be history by
2020. By then, most states will have
more relaxed policies, and the federal
government will reclassify marijuana to
bring government policy more in line
with common sense.
“Right now, according to the federal
government, marijuana is more danger-
ous than methamphetamine or co-
caine,” Blumenauer told the Labor
Press. “That’s crazy.”
Since 1972, marijuana has been
classified — along with heroin and
LSD — as a Schedule I Controlled
Substance, meaning that it has a “high
potential for abuse” and possesses “no
currently accepted medical use in treat-
ment in the United States.”
Blumenauer has urged the Obama
Administration to use its legal authority
to reclassify marijuana, but so far, the
president has refused.
“It’s well known that marijuana is
less dangerous than tobacco,” Blume-
nauer said, “and it’s used by about 20
million people every month in Amer-
ica. Prohibition has failed, just like al-
cohol prohibition failed.”
Quote of the Month
for by a small group of ultra-wealthy
donors using outside groups to bury
voters with an avalanche of spending.”
“The real story of the election’s
campaign finance chapter was not
which side had more resources, but that
such a large chunk of the cost was paid
E
E
FR
Who’s On Our Side?
n the afternoon of Nov. 4, I
began to follow election re-
turns from across the United States.
The news wasn’t good.
The Blue Tide that swept across
America in 2008 on President
Obama’s coattails was ebbing. De-
mocrats who had won Senate seats
in Republican states lost big.
Throughout the night, swing states
such as Colorado elected Republi-
cans. All in all, eight U.S. Senate
seats flipped from blue to red, as did
13 U.S. House of Representative
seats and three governorships.
These results aren’t surprising
when you start to evaluate the 2014
election. America’s governing bod-
ies — from the U.S. Senate to state
legislatures — became more con-
servative because working people
didn’t go to the polls. After eight
years of President Bush’s profit-at-
any-cost agenda, six years of Con-
gressional stagnation, and the rise
of corporate domination of the po-
litical process, working people
stayed home.
They didn’t go to the polls be-
cause they felt their vote didn’t mat-
ter. They were turned off by the mil-
lions of dollars spent on negative
advertising. Only 36.3 percent of
eligible voters made it to the polls
nationwide.
While America was becoming
more conservative, in a small cor-
ner of the Pacific Northwest, a state
became more progressive. The most
noticeable difference? 69.5 percent
of registered voters participated in
the 2014 election in Oregon.
Why is that?
Some say it is because we vote
by mail. But Colorado and Wash-
ington are vote-by-mail states, and
their voter turnout was just slightly
PAGE 6
BARGAIN COUNTER
Free classified ads to subscribers
By Tom Chamberlain
O
R USS C HOMA
C ENTER FOR R ESPONSIVE P OLITICS
N OV . 5, 2014
above the national average.
Some say that ballot measures
drove voter turnout. Five states had
minimum wage on the ballot, and
Alaska, Arkansas, Illinois, Ne-
braska and South Dakota all ex-
ceeded the national turnout. But
none came near Oregon’s turnout
numbers.
Why is it that Oregon has moved
progressively left since the mid-
1990s when Republicans controlled
both chambers and Democrat John
Kitzhaber was governor? Was it the
migration of tech jobs into Wash-
ington County, once a Republican
stronghold that now votes consis-
tently progressive? Is there some-
thing else turning outlying parts of
our purple state blue?
I believe Oregon’s success is a
combination of factors that includes
vote by mail, takes into account
Washington County turning blue,
and acknowledges the content of
our ballot measures.
But it’s more than that.
What separates Oregon from the
rest of the country is that we have
learned to fight together.
Billionaires bought the airwaves
to fight GMOs, push the top-two
primary, and support Monica We-
hby and Dennis Richardson. This is
not strange territory for Oregon. We
always seem to be in someone’s
electoral gun sights. Tax reform, re-
strictions on marriage, limiting
workers’ rights, all have been on the
Oregon ballot with mixed results.
Oregon is a cheap media market
and attracts all manner of million-
aire crackpots. This constant elec-
tion year attack has forged a strong
alliance within Oregon’s progres-
sive community. We know that
while it may not be our fight this
year, it could be our fight next year.
Environmentalists, immigrant
rights, choice and basic rights ac-
tivists, unions and working people
— we’ve all banded together to
share resources, develop strategies,
and fight an ongoing onslaught of
conservative ballot measures.
The 2014 election cycle was
Oregon at its best, carrying the mes-
sage door to door, on the phone, in
the workplace and through the mail.
Our combined efforts made a dif-
ference.
Since 2010, the Oregon AFL-
CIO has not contributed to candi-
dates but, instead, invested in our in-
frastructure. We’ve created the
largest ground game in the state —
complete with call sectors, weekly
canvasses, worksite programs, and
Working America.
This year we hired on-the-
ground staff in Bend, Medford,
Corvallis and Eugene to establish
our program across the state, and it
paid off. Thirty percent of our calls
and walks were done outside the
Portland area. Sara Gelser and Alan
Bates won hard-fought State Senate
elections in Corvallis and Medford
— two regions where our ground
game was on the move.
We as a progressive movement
should be proud of what we have
accomplished. But we should also
remember that we won because we
kept our egos in check. We won be-
cause we fought together. We won
because we realize the future of our
state and our nation rests in the
hands of the people, not corpora-
tions and billionaires.
Tom Chamberlain is president of
the Oregon AFL-CIO.
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