By Enform Staff Guest editorial
Marijuana may be widely accepted and poised to become legal in Canada, but no amount of changes to attitudes and laws can make it safer—on or off the job. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has promised to make weed legal in July 2018, lifting a 97-year-old prohibition.
Whether that promise becomes law, one thing is certain: marijuana is widely accepted across the country. That acceptance might have you thinking marijuana is harmless. But it’s not, especially in the oil and gas industry. In a word, marijuana impairs. Not always exactly the same way alcohol or other drugs (legal or illegal) do, but it still erodes your ability to think and act.
Cameron MacGillivray, president and CEO of Enform says, “The oil and gas industry has a responsibility to prevent workers who may be unfit for duty from engaging in activities that could have devastating consequences for themselves, their co-workers, the public or the environment.”
A Workplace Hazard
If you work in a safety-sensitive job—as in you work in the field in the oil and gas industry and are surrounded by heavy equipment and complex systems—pot can make you a workplace hazard.
Both workers and employers have a personal and legal responsibility to take every reasonable precaution to ensure a workplace is safe. “Don’t assume people understand the risks, especially those related to driving and equipment operations,” says Loretta Bouwmeester, a Calgary lawyer with Mathews Dinsdale & Clark LLP who specializes in occupational health and safety. She points to Washington state, where one-third of impaired drivers have tested positive for marijuana every year since weed was legalized in 2014.
Health Canada advises that your ability to “drive or perform activities requiring alertness” can be impaired for up to 24 hours after a single use of marijuana.
Review Alcohol + Drug Policy as Needed
Bouwmeester says employers have a responsibility to help their workers understand the effects—and risks—of marijuana use in the workplace. “You need to plan, do, check, act and repeat,” Bouwmeester says. Her recommendations, which apply equally to alcohol and other drugs, include:
• Have a policy that focuses on whether someone is impaired rather than the source of the impairment.
• Implement the policy, including training supervisors and workers — clearly communicate the consequences of failing to comply with the policy.
• Know your duty to accommodate and educate employees on being fit for duty. Employees with legitimate underlying health concerns can be helped in a number of ways, such as a medical leave of absence, treatment/rehabilitation, or temporary reassignment.
• Be proactive — take steps before something becomes a problem.
• Understand and take steps to protect the confidentiality of personal health information.
Because no reliable test yet exists for determining marijuana impairment, an individual can only be tested for the presence of the substance. With marijuana, the level of impairment versus what’s in the system is not as direct a link as it is with alcohol. Chronic heavy users of marijuana can test positive on urine tests for up to approximately 30 days. A joint smoked by a worker off rotation on personal time, could see them sidelined for weeks because they are unfit for duty.
The same holds true for medical marijuana. Depending on someone’s use of marijuana, drug and alcohol treatment could also be required.
“Until there is clear evidence and a complete understanding of what level of impairment is deemed to be considered safe, a zero-tolerance policy regarding the presence of marijuana is the only safe choice,” adds MacGillivray.
If the federal government keeps its promise to legalize marijuana, Enform and its member associations are asking the legislation to call for anyone who tests positive for marijuana use be removed from safety-sensitive positions until they test negative (as is currently the case). The ability to test is important for the industry and safety sensitive environments.
The presence of marijuana in the system of a worker is unacceptable in the workplace, especially in safety-sensitive areas. When it comes to marijuana, employers and workers need to understand that no amount of legislation is going to make marijuana safe in the workplace.
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