Brandon Coats suffered a devastating injury at age 16 that left him in a wheelchair with barely 20 percent of his motor functions intact. But after years of grueling therapy, he was able to develop enough upper body function to use a computer and was eager to put that hard-won skill to work. Credit where credit is due: Dish Network stepped up, took the risk on a disabled employee, and the investment paid off handsomely. Within a few months, Coats was a top customer service rep, and even as the Great Recession spelled layoffs for millions, he was earning praise and promotions.
But after three years of admirable performance, Dish randomly checked Coats' precious bodily fluids and decided they didn't like his muscle relaxer:
At first, Coats used prescription drugs to combat the spasms, but over time their efficacy waned. Then his doctors recommended he start using medical marijuana. Coats joined Colorado’s medical marijuana registry in 2009, hoping that the cannabis would alleviate the persistent spasms. Medical marijuana changed his life. Smoking a small amount of cannabis each evening proved effective treatment, enabling him to go to work without discomfort the next day.
So he was summarily fired. The company got away with this scot-free, because court after court ruled it's perfectly legal to discriminate against an employee for using a prescription drug. How did we ever get to this absurd state of affairs and what should be done about it? That and more below the big orange event horizon.
The primary drug in marijuana goes by the polysyllabic name delta-9 tetrahydrocannibinal or THC. But THC is merely one of a class of diverse chemical compounds found in marijuana referred to as
cannabinoids that act on a variety receptors in the brain. Most researchers agree that cannabinoids rank as the "safest" recreational
street drug:
A fatal marijuana overdose in humans would take 40,000 times the amount of THC that it took to get them high in the first place. In comparison, it would only take 5 to 10 times the amount of alcohol to get drunk to kill a human. If you can get drunk on 3 beers, then 15 to 30 beers can cause death. If you inhale 3 puffs of marijuana smoke and get high, then you would have to take 120,000 puffs of marijuana smoke to be fatal. In this sense, it is nearly impossible to die from an overdose of marijuana.
Two of the best documented effects of cannabis are an increase in appetite and a reduction in nausea. It was this dual effect that led to the first modern medical use in cancer patients suffering from the side effects of chemotherapy. Over time, some patients also noticed the drug reduced pain and relaxed muscles. That's a big deal for chronic pain patients.
Muscle relaxers are drugs like cyclobenzaprine (Flexeril) and Methocarbamol. Traditional pain meds include powerful opiates like oxycontin or morphine, along with a class of drugs called NSAIDs, like ibuprofen. These drugs all provide critical relief for millions of patients. But extended use can come at a price: damage to the liver and kidneys in the case of opiates or muscle relaxers, damage to the stomach lining in the case of NSAIDs. Cannabis is much easier on the body, it soothes nausea, it's virtually impossible to overdose on, and produces little or no physical dependence. Given those properties, it's not surprising that cannabis became an obvious choice for patients and doctors seeking alternatives.
And so cannabis slowly overcame its hippie counterculture roots and came to be recognized by many doctors as a useful drug to treat all manner of problems. Medical marijuana advocates slowly overcame entrenched political inertia via ballot initiative in several states and legalized it for medical use.... And just as quickly it ran headlong into the unyielding brick wall known as the War on Drugs.
The War on some Drugs has already made life more miserable for thousands of sick and injured Americans suffering intractable pain. Over the years, political pandering to law enforcement and public hysteria has made it much harder to get scripts filled. Pain patients desperate for relief are routinely lumped in with recreational users and drug dealers. But when it comes to cannabis, that misguided war has led to a truly absurd situation. One in which some of the most powerful, addictive substances known to medical science are perfectly okay to use as prescribed, even at work. And yet legally prescribed cannabis used at home as directed can get a patient fired, or for that matter arrested and jailed.
Now, thanks in part to companies like Dish Network and their obsession with the personal lives of anyone who works for them, it's a war that gives corporations an iron-clad, court-sanctioned veto over the medical treatment of disabled employees.
Brandon Coats may be one needless casualty of the War on some Drugs, but odds are he's not alone. Alas, we will probably never know exactly how many others have suffered similar discrimination. The stigma of using cannabis, legal or not, remains so great that the vast majority of patients can't risk publicly admitting they use it, much less file suit against an employer who goes randomly trolling through their snot or urine.
That's not even getting into the science of this: a few doses from a single cannabis prescription are detectable in a drug screen for weeks, whereas crack or heroin used for kicks will clear out in a couple of days. A test that's 99 percent accurate means, on average, for every 10,000 drug-free employees checked in a given year, the 100 fired for testing positive will be innocent. We also haven't mentioned the perverse obsession on display here—that demanding pee or spit or blood or feces of an employee without a damn good reason, beyond wanting to know what they do at nights or on weekends, is a weird, twisted, creepy thing to do.
What's frustrating is how easily this could be resolved. It's true that some companies in some industries are required by federal law to screen for illicit drugs and that medical marijuana has gotten sucked into that practice. But companies willing to spend millions enforcing a now-obsolete policy could just as easily adjust to changes in law, save those same dollars, and protect their employees' choice in prescription drugs in the bargain.
The fact is, most companies aren't required to test, which means they choose to do it. And that brings up a troubling question: Why would senior management at any company send an army of expensive corporate lawyers goose-stepping into the highest courts in the state to screw over one single working-class guy in a wheelchair, unless they want to preserve that kind of control freakery at all cost?