Employee protections

A separate bill from Del. Jheanelle Wilkins, a Montgomery County Democrat, would bar employers from disciplining employees who use cannabis outside of work, while still allowing them to take action against anyone who consumes while working.

“As long as an employee is not impaired on the job, they should not face any employment consequences from utilizing what is now legal in the state of Maryland,” Wilkins said in a hearing.

Under the bill, employers who test for cannabis would have to update their drug policies. Employers could still test for impairment, but experts in cannabis policy and drug testing testified about the imprecise nature of such tests. Ryan Vandrey, a Johns Hopkins University professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, said there is no testing method for urine, saliva or blood that can reliably tell whether a cannabis user is impaired.

“Recognizing that detecting impairment in the workplace is most important and that biological markers of testing are insufficient, I think we need to rethink how we approach this,” Vandrey said.

Wilson, who chairs the committee that heard both his and Wilkins’ bills, said he agrees current testing is “antiquated” and it’s “troubling” that an employee could easily be fired for a positive test of a legal substance. Still, Wilson said he’s not willing to create a “protected class of people called pot smokers,” putting them in a similar category that protects employees from discrimination based on gender or religion.

A final bill, he said, may have to exempt specific jobs, like those that require driving heavy machinery, from such protections.

“That’s a lot of work. We have to make sure we don’t leave people out in industries that really need it,” Wilson said in an interview. “We’re still moving toward that, if not this year, then next year.”