Nevermind State Law, Federal Employees Still Can’t Use Medical Marijuana – News

Lead image via Hudson Institute

A friendly reminder: if you work for the Feds, medical marijuana use — even if legal in your state — is still cause enough to lose your job. In a statement published in the Federal Register this week, the U.S. Department of Transportation clarified that even cannabis patients have no excuse for failing a drug test.

“It has always been the intent of this program to follow the [Controlled Substances Act] regarding what constitutes a legally valid prescription. The term ‘prescription’ has become more loosely used in recent years,” writes Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. “Some state laws allowing marijuana use the term ‘prescription,’ [however most use “recommendation” because cannabis isn’t FDA-approved] even though a recommendation for someone to use marijuana under state law is not a prescription consistent with the Controlled Substance Act.”

Point being, especially since drug tests can show the difference between THC ingested from cannabis and THC ingested from marinol (a synthetic pharmaceutical), federal transportation employees have no way around it. “Regardless of any state ‘medical marijuana’ laws, there cannot be a legally…

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