New Mexico Lawmakers Vote To Strengthen Employment Protections For Medical Marijuana Patients

New Mexico lawmakers have superior a invoice that will additional defend medical marijuana sufferers within the state from being penalized at work for off-duty use of hashish.

The Home Well being & Human Providers Committee on Friday authorized the laws from Home Majority Ground Chief Reena Szczepanski (D) in a 6-2 vote.

“Our first responders are coping with stress, power ache, insomnia, and PTSD,” Szczepanski, who beforehand labored on the reform group Drug Coverage Alliance, advised Marijuana Second. “Barring them from utilizing medical hashish on their very own time to handle signs is extremely dangerous and pointless. It’s time to make a change.”

Underneath the invoice, an “worker shall not be thought of to be impaired by hashish solely due to the presence of metabolites or parts of hashish,” it says.

The measure would additional prohibit random drug testing for marijuana, although sufferers might be screened if there’s affordable suspicion that hashish was used on the clock leading to “important harm to property.”

The committee on Friday adopted a minor modification that replaces a line within the invoice that had mentioned a “drug check for hashish shall be reviewed by a medical assessment officer who shall decide if the explanation for a constructive check has a official medical clarification.”

Underneath the brand new language, the invoice now says that an employer “shall comply with the hashish impairment tips when testing for hashish impairment.”

The measure additionally stipulates that the state Division of Well being should “help the workforce options division in growing hashish impairment tips which might be based mostly on essentially the most dependable research- or evidence-based hashish impairment indicators, together with the analysis of bodily signs and psychomotor and cognitive efficiency.”

“The workforce options division shall inform non-public employers of this part and supply data associated to the latest advances in testing protocols for figuring out hashish impairment,” it says. “The division of finance and administration shall disseminate the hashish impairment tips to state businesses and political subdivisions of the state.”

The panel had heard testimony earlier final week from labor leaders who signify firefighters and different public sector staff who can be protected by the invoice.

Miguel Tittmann, president of the Worldwide Affiliation of Hearth Fighters Native 244, mentioned that the group’s members who’re navy veterans will particularly profit from new office protections, stating that they disproportionately undergo from PTSD and ache.

“Shifts is how we work. Typically we don’t sleep for 48 hours,” he mentioned. “All of those illnesses that our members get identified with and prescribed totally different medicines having cannabinoids in them,” he mentioned.

Random drug testing for marijuana “is unconstitutional and unfair,” Tittmann mentioned. “They may lose their job, they are going to lose their livelihood, they are going to lose their pension. And that’s the crux of this.”

Theodore Ygbuhay, the union’s vp, referred to as hashish a “safer various to opiates and different drugs” that firefighters may use to deal with their illnesses.

“I feel anytime that we’re simply counting on a random urinalysis check that’s really not proving present impairment,” he mentioned. “It might return 30 days.”

In the meantime, commissioners in New Mexico’s most populous county not too long ago authorized coverage particulars of a plan to cease testing and punishing most authorities staff for off-hours marijuana use. Bernalillo County, the place Albuquerque is positioned, was the primary public physique within the state to implement the reform following the legalization of hashish in 2021.

—
Marijuana Second is monitoring tons of of hashish, psychedelics and drug coverage payments in state legislatures and Congress this yr. Patreon supporters pledging not less than $25/month get entry to our interactive maps, charts and listening to calendar so that they don’t miss any developments.

Be taught extra about our marijuana invoice tracker and change into a supporter on Patreon to get entry.
—

The committee vote on the statewide hashish employment laws comes as a bipartisan proposal to ascertain a therapeutic psilocybin program in New Mexico had an preliminary listening to earlier than a Senate panel, with lawmakers voting unanimously to advance the invoice.

Final yr, New Mexico lawmakers handed, and Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) endorsed, a decision requesting that state officers analysis the therapeutic potential of psilocybin and discover the creation of a regulatory framework to supply entry to the psychedelic.

The prior yr, the Home Well being and Human Providers Committee handed a invoice that referred to as for the creation of a state physique to research the potential of launching a psilocybin remedy program for sure sufferers. That measure didn’t advance additional within the 2023 session, nevertheless.