Employers testing for weed will increasingly miss out on good employees

By Megan McArdle, Bloomberg View

In Youngstown, Ohio, the employment problem is not a shortage of jobs. Nor is it a shortage of workers. The problem is not stingy employers who don’t want to pay enough to attract good workers. Nor is the problem that potential workers are too busy playing video games to show up for their job interviews.

So what’s the trouble? The only thing standing between willing employers and willing workers is a drug test.

Unfortunately, these aren’t jobs where you can say uptight, moralizing employers are prying too deeply into the private lives of their employees. They’re industrial jobs where the risk of accidents — potentially fatal accidents — is high. Employers cannot run the risk of people showing up intoxicated and killing themselves or their co-workers. Even if they were willing to run their workplace that way, safety inspectors and insurers wouldn’t let them.

But is an employee really a danger to others because he smokes a little pot on weekends? Well, while it’s easy to…