Another round with Mary Jane

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OK, I wanna talk about pot. I realize that this is a polarizing topic. But I have a question that some of you folks may be able to answer. Here's the preamble:

Currently alcohol is legal. That is to say, the use of alcohol in one's off time is ostensibly not any of a potential employer's business, and legally you can't be denied a job or fired from a job merely for using alcohol in your off hours.

However, unless I am mistaken, if you are a known pot user, you can be denied a job or dismissed form a job because by virtue of being a pot user you are also a criminal.

So, if we were to legalize pot, would it make it easier for stoners to get jobs that currently are closed to them? I ask this in the interest of public safety in that I don't want stoners operating heavy machinery, driving buses or taxis, or otherwise endangering the public.*

I personally would never use the stuff, but I am, in a recreational sense, a live and let live guy, and I want the jail cells emptied out and filled with rapists and murderers.

This is a complicated question with many variables. Have at 'er!

*I realize that stoners already are in such jobs, but would legalization result in a flood of stoners entering the aforementioned fields?

 

Why is being stoned worse than being drunk?

 

It isn't, really, but the argument I hear is along these lines:

"It's bad enough we have drunks who we can't fire because what they do is legal. Why should we compound the problem by adding stoners to the list?"

 

Good question, Silvery. It isn't.

Granny Rogue is going to be honest. Remember I am from the 60s generation. The generation of rebellion. However I spent that decade plus 3 years in an Episcopal convent so didn't get much chance to rebel. Hokay I did some, couldn't help since I am a natural born rebel. Left August of 1973.
There was a lot still going on then. I tried pot, didn't like it. The effect it had on me was to slow time down or at least seem to. Second hand pot gave me a horrible headache. That was that but I did meet people who used recreational pot.

Successful business men and women. Losers, winners pretty much like the alcoholics I grew up around. My Mother and grandparents were not alcoholics but I had uncles by blood and by marriage that were.

My personal opinion based solely on my personal experience is that I'll take the pot users over the alcoholics. I am sure that there are people who become dependent on pot and over use it. Addiction comes in many forms and flavors. I live near Atlantic City, NJ but I don't go there because I am a compulsive gambler.

My opinion on legalizing pot is yes, do it. Hey as we get rid of tobacco the tobacco farmers could switch to pot and get rich.

edit: BTA is right.

 

I meant to say this earlier but was too stoned to remember my point (:LOL: sorry, I have a rubbish sense of humour).
I drink but wouldn't go to work drunk. A lot of people I know drink - some very heavily - and wouldn't go to work drunk.
Same with a lot of stoners I know. They do pot, that doesn't mean they'd think it was ok to go to work stoned.

Plus, if you are drunk at work, caught drinking at work or drink so much alcohol it affects your ability to do your job, you can be fired for gross misconduct. Just because it's legal to drink doesn't mean that people do it all the time. Leaf leafy is just the same

 

What you said in your second post is pretty much my stance on this issue LKD. Pot isn't worse than alcohol, hell in many ways it is probably less bad but that doesn't mean that it is good. Look at the immense amount of damage the legalized drug alcohol is doing to our societies now and imagine introducing a second drug that is at best slightly less detrimental in addition to that because I do not think people will stop drinking. Now, if we could switch out the roles of alcohol and pot then that would be something worth thinking about.

 

Most "stoners," as you call them, that I've known in my life have had jobs where their chronic pot use was never an issue. Drive-thru at Starbucks, record store clerk, county road crew, college professor, registered nurse...I've known many and could go on. Though these are all jobs one can easily do stoned (nurse being the obvious exception), not one of them was dumb enough to be stoned on the job except on a rare occasion. They would consider it a waste of the high. The effort required to perform one's tasks would negate the fun of the high, which is the whole point. They would spend the whole shift nervous and paranoid for fear of messing up and being found out. It's usually teenagers or dumb casual pot users who go to work high and lack the self control to hide the signs of being stoned. And those people don't stay employed long, anyway.

At the end of the day, if they do their job well and can keep their recreational use to their personal time, what harm is there? If they come to work drunk or stoned, then obviously there's a problem. But not before.

So no, in my opinion it shouldn't be illegal, and at the rate public perceptions are moving towards sanity, one day it won't be. And on that day, little will change except the emptying of jails of victimless criminals. People who think pot is dumb still won't do it, and the rate of "stoners" getting heavy-machinery jobs remain unchanged. Employers will likely still legally be able to test for pot use, even if pot is legalized. There will just be a legal limit attached to it, like the .08 limit for drunk driving.

 

I thought about that too. If you commute to work, and you show up drunk, that means you drove drunk - which is very illegal. That said, while many employers test for pot, no one tests for alcohol, probably because there's no reliable test one can run unless you're actually drunk at the time.

That said, I have no idea how long pot stays in your system either. AFAIK, I could get drunk off my ass tonight, be hung over as hell tomorrow morning, but if I took a blood test, it would come back clean, because the body would have already processed the alcohol. However, if I got stoned off my ass tonight and took a test the next day, I'd test positive.

Not only do I not know how long it needs to be since your last use to test positive for pot, I also don't know if there is a difference between the frequent and infrequent user. For example, say one person smoke once per week, and another smokes once per day. If they both stop smoking for three days would their levels be the same?

 

I think we might need Dotty in on this one

 

THC can be detected in your system for several weeks (unlike alcohol), even though the intoxicating effects wear off after a few hours (like alcohol). The difference here would be one of probable cause, I suppose. If you show up to work acting funny, I suppose the solution would be for the employer to require the employee to submit to a sobriety test. It wouldn't matter if they're drunk or high, the result of the test would be the same: the employee is too impaired to work and would be disciplined as per the discretion of the employer. Probably fired. But in this case, for good reason. But I doubt any employer would even bother with a sobriety test, unless the worker emphatically denied being under the influence yet acted strangely anyway. Most employers would just make a judgment on the spot based merely on the behavior, and most would be right to.

 

The last place I worked would do random drug and alcohol tests and would also do a test if anyone was behaving in a suspicious manner

 

DR espoused a position I can get behind. I'm not sure the world would end if we legalized the stuff, as many state. As long as appropriate safeguards are in place to prevent people from working while under the influence of any drug, might as well legalize it and tax the stuffing out of it!

 

So just the same as alcohol then

 

This is, almost to a tee, the position of every legalization advocate I've ever met. Decriminalize it, tax it, keep public intoxication arrestable for safety and voila - police can devote their time to actual criminals, and harmless citizens can freely engage in a harmless activity. Pot has never been a hard drug and treating it like one has never made any sense.

 

One more post and dmc's a 5k runner! /offtopic

 

Post! Post! Post! Post!

Sorry, I could help it in a drug topic. As for the difference, the only difference I see is that THC stays in your system, as has already been pointed out. It can even be absorbed by fat cells and re-released as a stoner (or recovering stoner) looses weight. I have no idea if that means anything other than that it'll be harder to test for drug effects, but it's the most significant difference I can see. I too am of the 'Legalize it and tax the hell out of it' opinion. I especially can't see why tobacco is legal, but MJ isn't. Tobacco is definitely worse.

 

And the resident smokehead you get.

I have always prefered MJ over booze... I do not drink anymore, as a matter of fact. With MJ, one can definitively carry on with everyday life... like say, a boring class at school. MJ also aided my focus and concentration, and it helped me pull out the harder math exams, as I could focus on each question completely, the anxiety and stress taking the backseat. Attending a class/exam/blah drunk? Good luck pulling that off.

MJ is also a wonderful relaxant, and after a pissant day, yeah, I like chilling out. And I don't always take the time to eat well, so when I smoke after getting back from work, it kicks the hunger gear in and forces me to take the time to eat something decent, which is a refreshing change from the liquid diet of energy drinks.

As far as drug tests go, yeah, employers can request that of you, but I've never had it happen to me. As long as someone can do the job and do it well, what they like to do in their own spare time is their own buisness. I'm clear-headed at work and able to perform my duties well, so why the hells does it matter? BUT, on a side note... I DO NOT share the same point of view when it comes to hard drugs! This stuff is GARBAGE. I smoke my dub, and that's it.

Legalize and tax? If they can offer a product of good quality, why not? Use the money and the manpower to wage war on hard drugs, the REAL threat!

 

DotW, MJ helped with math? One comment I (vaguely) remember from the movie "Super High Me" (very fun movie, btw, and informative) was the doctor telling the guy that, while on MJ, his math skills basically committed hari-kari. Of course, that was a month-long constant high.