“We are definitely headed into unchartered territory”, says an Ohio chemical dependency counsellor Ruth Bowdish, about medical marijuana, to manufacturing officials at the Environmental Health and Safety Summit. She said employees could be vaping in factories and no one would know as you can vape but not smoke medical marijuana in Ohio. Bowdish said earlier you could recognise marijuana with its strong and spunky odour, but now the game has changed as the electronic or liquid marijuana are available in a variety of flavours. So she asked everyone to take reasonable suspicion training and pay attention to behaviour & some typical signs and symptoms of marijuana.
Ohio law allows employers to ban all marijuana from the workplace including the medical one. But the drug epidemic is hitting the workplace. “Zero tolerance can really mean zero tolerance,” she emphasized. 70% of drug abusers aren’t homeless but people with jobs who are coming to work every day according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Bowdish added that Food and Drug Administration’s 1997 decision to allow drugmakers to advertise directly to consumers has contributed to the legal marijuana boom today. As people started seeing ads, the drug abuse became a norm. Today, seven out 10 Americans are taking some type of prescription drug and Marijuana is the most abused drug in America, she said.
She was forthright about the approach of America towards things. If Americans want something they want it instantly and that’s why they are looking at pills for answers, she said. There isn’t enough data about the abuse yet and its effects on the jobs and without information we are surrounded by problems, she concluded.
