Massachusetts lawmakers have advanced a bill to provide employment protections for people who use marijuana.
Members of the Joint Committee on Labor and Workforce Development on Friday passed the legislation from Rep. Chynah Tyler (D), sending it to the House Steering, Policy and Scheduling Committee for further consideration.
This comes about two months after a separate committee passed a similar employment protections bill from Rep. Michael Kushmerek (D).
Under the proposal that advanced on Friday, employers would be barred from requiring a drug test for cannabis until a conditional offer is made. Even then, the measure states that employers may not “directly or indirectly solicit or require an employee or prospective employee to submit to testing for the presence of marijuana in his or her system as a condition of employment.”
Qualifying medical marijuana patients would also be afforded specific protections.
Employers could not “refuse to hire, terminate from employment, penalize, fail to promote, or otherwise take adverse employment action against an individual based upon the individual’s status as a qualifying patient unless the individual used, possessed, or was impaired by marijuana at the individual’s place of employment or during the hours of employment.”
“A qualifying patient’s failure to pass
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