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Associated Oregon Industries, Enemies of Medical Marijuana

Associated Oregon Industries (AOI) is a pro-business organization made up of Oregon companies and national companies with Oregon offices. Their mission is to lobby the Oregon legislature on issues that impact businesses. While we at Oregon NORML are supportive of Oregon's business community, we cannot ignore AOI's position regarding medical marijuana patients in the workplace.

Simply put, AOI is fighting to allow Oregon employers to fire medical marijuana patients...
solely for using their medicine!

This isn't about allowing medical marijuana patients to fire up their medical delivery device at the workplace. This issue stems from a court case, Washburn v. Columbia Forest Products, which is soon to be heard by the Oregon Supreme Court. Washburn, a registered medical marijuana patient since 1999, was fired from his job after testing positive for THC metabolites in his urine during a urine test.

As anyone familiar with marijuana policy can tell you, the active medicinal ingredient in cannabis is delta-9 tetrahydrocannibinol (THC). Urine tests do not test for the presence of THC, but rather the metabolites a person's system produces in reaction to THC. These metabolites can remain present in a person's system for 30 to 45 days, well after any psychoactive or motor impairment -- and the actual THC -- has long since left the person's system.

Therefore, a patient who uses medical marijuana at night to calm the spasms of multiple sclerosis (like talk show host Montel Williams) so he can sleep peacefully could awaken the next day, fresh and sober, go into work, fail a urine test, and be fired that day. Or a cancer patient who uses medical marijuana once per week to deal with the nausea from her weekly chemotherapy sessions could fail the urine test next week and be out on the streets looking for work. Even a patient who uses medical marijuana only once a month for occasional pain faces the prospect of losing his job, just for using his legally prescribed pain medicine. Very few of Oregon's 11,000+ medical marijuana patients could ever pass an employer's urine test.

Can you imagine any pro-business organization fighting for an employer privilege to fire employees who test positive for any other legal medication in their urine? Why is AOI not demanding the privilege of employers to fire people who use OxyContin, Vicodin, Percocet, or Darvocet outside the workplace and on their own time?

AOI contends that the Washburn case has the potential of allowing medical marijuana patients to use their medicine immediately before work, and that employees will be facing "dangerous conditions" from working alongside cannabis-impaired patients. Such drug war hysteria has long since been debunked. Cannabis users, medical or not, have never been shown to have significantly higher incidents of accident, absenteeism, inefficiency, behavioral, or other problems in the workplace.

Of course, an impaired medical marijuana patient in the workplace is not what concerns AOI and their supporters; it's the functional, productive, gainfully-employed medical marijuana patient they fear. Businesses have invested a great deal of time and money in workplace drug testing regimens. Many businesses get deductions on their insurance premiums for enacting workplace drug testing programs. Also, drug testing programs allow businesses to legally discriminate against hiring a certain "type" of person (0ne who chooses cannabis over, say, a six-pack of beer after work) and to maintain an atmosphere of intrusion and control over the private lives of those they do hire.

How is a business going to justify a program to test an employee's urine for marijuana when all the employees work alongside a medical marijuana patient who is a productive, safe, efficient model employee? How will a company use the scare tactics of the marijuana user creating "dangerous conditions" in the workplace when the company's medical marijuana patient proves so obviously that scenario to be a lie? They can't -- and AOI knows it -- so they are willing to sacrifice the jobs of medical marijuana patients so the drug testing house of cards doesn't come tumbling down.

AOI has been fighting against medical marijuana for a long time now. In the last legislative session, they lobbied aggressively for bills that would grant employers the privilege of firing medical marijuana patients. Their allies in the Oregon Legislature added amendments to the recently-passed Senate Bill 1085 to give employers that very privilege -- amendments that were narrowly defeated by Oregon NORML and other medical marijuana-supporting organizations and our allies in the Senate.

We can make a difference! Let AOI know you oppose their stance on medical marijuana! Vote with your dollars -- Boycott AOI member companies and tell them your money will not find its way to any company that supports AOI's anti-medical-marijuana lobbying!

AOI Staff Contact Information

Associated Oregon Industries
1149 Court ST NE
Salem, OR 97301-4030
Fax: 503-588-0052

Salem: 503-588-0050
Portland: 503-227-5636
Statewide: 800-452-7862

Sample letter to Associated Oregon Industries

List of AOI's 2005 Mission Members

Sample boycott letter to AOI Member Companies

(*response) So, Lisa, the solution to your hypothetical medical marijuana user smoking in the parking lot during work hours is to allow employers to fire any medical marijuana patient, even if they use responsibly, away from the workplace, and never show up for work impaired?

"...unless I could prove impairment, I couldn't do anything about it. Well, if you can't prove the patient is impaired, what's the problem? Your whole argument is based on the fiction that impaired medical marijuana patients could cause safety issues in the workplace. If they are so unimpaired that a manager can't detect the impairment, then it seems like you're just being prejudiced against medical marijuana patients.

Workplace safety is a legitimate issue. Safety issues can be caused by employees being too tired, poorly trained, or under the influence of many other legal medications like painkillers, antihistamines, or antidepressants. That's why Oregon NORML supports any efforts that actually determine impairment in the workplace. But the mere presence of THC metabolites in urine do not prove impairment by any measure; an employee like Washburn could use medical marijuana the night before and still fail the urine test -- completely sober and unimpaired -- the next day.

Medical marijuana patients are decent, hard-working Oregon citizens who deserve just as much accommodation for their use of legal prescription marijuana as any other Oregon citizen using a legal prescription medicine. They should not fear for their continued employment simply because they use a medication you do not approve of personally.