It is almost certain that the 56 percent of California voters who approved Proposition 215 in an attempt to legalize medical use of marijuana did not drive at for employers to tell one from the other against persons who take advantage of the law they passed.
As it has evolved since passage, the 1996 initiative lets cities and counties issue medipot usage cards to users who smoke the weed to ward off pain caused by ailments from migraine headaches to a wide variety of cancers. Where they exist, the cards can only be obtained with a doctor’s recommendation.
With that background, the question before the rank Supreme Court earlier this year was whether an employer have power to fire a worker for using of the healing art marijuana with a doctor’s recommendation.
Given that court’s longtime background as a bastion of civil liberties, most recently seen in a gay marriage decision very much in line with its tradition of ensuring Californians have flat more rights than the U.S. Constitution guarantees, the answer was surprising.
Yes, the court said, a worker can be fired by reason of using medipot with a medical practitioner’s permission even if that use has cipher effect without interruption his or her piece of work performance.
"The Compassionate Use Act (Proposition 215) does not eliminate marijuana’s potential for abuse or the employer’s legitimate interest in whether an employee uses the medicine," said the 5-2 majority notion written by Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar. She somehow thought she was backing up that statement by the agency of adding that "Under California law, an employer may require pre-employment unsalable article tests and put on illicit drug use into consideration in making employment decisions." What about legal mix with drugs use, as defined by California voters?
The case itself was totally new judicial ground. Because California and only a few other states have okayed any form of legal medical marijuana use, no similar case has reached the U.S. Supreme Court, the only venue whose decisions form a binding precedent because the rise above others state courts.
It’s clear the court majority reacted with a knee-jerk against any species of pot conversion to an act.
That’s essentially the sort of dissenting Justices Joyce L. Kennard and Carlos Moreno said in their minority opinion. The court ruling "renders illusory the law’s promise that responsible appliance of marijuana" will not be penalized, they said.
In this case, neither employer RagingWire Com-munications of Sacramento nor anyone else ever claimed that computer technician Gary Ross was less than competent during the 11 days he worked there.
Rather, company lawyers related the firm feared it might be subject to federal raids if Ross stayed.
Federal agents have staged hundreds of raids on city- or county-sanctioned medical marijuana clinics and arrested many medipot growers. But never on those who give employment to users.
Prosecutors preserve federal laws making all uses of pot illegal trump the state initiative and any local decree designed to make it work. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed in 2005, prevailing Proposition 215 does not exempt curative marijuana users from undertaking, no matter how severe their indisposition.
So when a standard pre-employment test detected Ross’ pot exercise, the state’s boisterous court said, RagingWire was free to bounce him level though he had shown his medipot card prior to the put drugs into experiment.
When Ross sued, the company responded that it would "arguably be complicit in an activity that’s illegal under federal enactment" and might waste federal contracts if it kept Ross.
All this left medipot activists frustrated until the state Assembly in late May passed a bill essentially revoking the flatter decision. This putative law would let medipot patients work, like anyone else. But they could not smoke on the job.
Yet to be determined is whether the state Senate will go along. If it does, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger - an admitted pot smoker with no medicinal justification during his bodybuilding and movie days - would have to be a complete formalist to veto it.
If that law doesn’face to face pass, the intimation delivered by several medical marijuana backers at a news conference just after the court decision came down will stand. "People are going to endure pain and suffering because Supreme Court justices don’t feel marijuana has any therapeutical value. It doesn’t matter what citizens and patients say. It doesn’t matter what doctors say."
What’s more, the dissenting justices were absolutely correct in saying the decision, if it stands, step medipot users can be punished for hard to bear to kill their pain. They would then continue to face what Kennard called a "cruel choice" between loss their jobs or giving up the excepting that medication that provides eminently expressive comfort in coping with some illnesses and with cancer chemotherapy.
The governing also opens up other problems for patients who use legalized narcotics like morphine with a view to pain. They, over, could neglect a drug test, get fired and have no legitimate recourse.
For suppose that employees can be dumped for using one drug, who’s to say they can’t also be fired for using another?
News Hawk: User: http://www.420magazine.com/
Source: theunion.com
Copyright: 2008 Swift Communications
Contact: The Union.com
Website: Thomas D. Elias: No good reason for medipot decision counter to voters’ wishes
Source: http://www.420magazine.com/forums/international-cannabis-news/78175-no-good-reason-medipot-decision-counter-voter-wishes.html
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