DEPT. 420 MONTHY COMIC STRIP

New Bill Might Help Cannabis Users Keep Their Jobs (Cont'd)

with state law, not at work, and not impaired at work.”

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, workers who test positive for marijuana had 55% more industrial accidents, 85% more injuries, and 75% greater absenteeism compared to those who tested negative.

In 2018, the nationwide rate of positive drug tests hit a 14-year high at 4.4% for Quest Diagnostics which bases this number on the 10 million tests it has processed. According to Quest, the number of non-safety-sensitive jobs who tested positive for marijuana in California rose from 2.3% the year before Proposition 64 to 3.1% in 2018, which is higher than the national rate of 2.8%.

This upward trend isn’t unique to just California according to Barry Sample, Senior Director for Science and Technology at Quest Diagnostics. Sample says that Positive marijuana tests are trending upward in other states that have legalized recreational use of marijuana. “Marijuana is not only present in our workforce, but use continues to increase. As marijuana policy changes, and employers consider strategies to protect their employees, customers and general public, employers should weigh the risks that drug use, including marijuana, poses to their business.”

Drug testing is required of 25 state agencies including Caltrans, where federal highway safety rules apply to truck drivers and heavy equipment operators. Caltrans has seen a slight uptick in the number of job applicants disqualified for marijuana use in the last two years compared to before Proposition 64.

The California Chamber of Commerce is generally opposed to restricting the ability of companies to conduct pre-employment drug tests. “Allowing drug use in the workplace — including requiring an employer to accommodate an employee’s marijuana use — could jeopardize the safety of other workers as well as the public,” the Chamber said in a statement this month.

Businesses with federal contracts face mandates to keep workplaces drug-free, said Robert Moutrie, a policy advocate for the Chamber.

Q & A with Army Veteran Michelle Tippens, CTE, TBI, PTSD & More Michelle Tippens is a veteran who is currently running for Tulsi Gabbard's seat in Congress. She’s one of the founders of the Hawaii Veteran’s Cannabis Alliance. She also puts on an event in November called Stoke for the Cure, a medical cannabis strain search that finds the best strains for specific medical problems and raises money for veterans. Here’s a quick Q&A with her about PTSD and brain injuries.

Q: How did you get your brain injury? A: I was in a car accident. I was near El Dorado, Texas, and the sun roof of the car broke my neck when the car rolled over. I crawled out of the car, got a ride from a trucker who brought me to a nursing home where I was medivac-ed to a private hospital and then back to Fort Hood.

Q: What would you like to see changed with the way our society handles PTSD? A: I see a tremendous expectation for sensitivity in dealing with alcoholism as a disease. It would be nice to see PTSD treated with a similar amount of care. PTSD doesn’t simply mean a person has dealt with difficult experiences, it also means those events have negatively affected the way that person interprets and reacts to the world. A person can’t “just stop” being triggered, they have to retrain a more appropriate response and that takes time and practice.

Q: How does cannabis help with veterans, PTSD and traumatic brain injury? A: The US Patent Trade Office awarded a patent that identifies cannabis as a substance that protects brain cells and causes them to regenerate. However just healing the tissue isn’t enough. Allowing a person to remember an event objectively so they can untrain the survival response is just as important; cannabis does both. Many veterans have true survival memories. Recognizing the survival moment is over is easier with cannabis, calming those survival responses is easier with cannabis, being nice again is easier with cannabis.

Q: What does your brain scan look like now? A: The last CT on my brain showed “a young, healthylooking brain” according to the neurologist. This was epic news considering I was diagnosed with brain damage in 2003 and had several other CTs that showed the damage prior to starting cannabis in 2010.