Medical marijuana is a risk that employers won't want to take when considering Arkansas for job growth, Gov. Asa Hutchinson said at a news conference Wednesday with industry leaders and Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin standing behind him.
Two measures that would allow marijuana to be used for medical purposes under the direction of a doctor will appear on Arkansas ballots Nov. 8; whether votes for them are counted depends on the outcome of legal challenges.
Hutchinson, along with the industry leaders, said that both the Arkansas Medical Cannabis Act and the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Amendment would prevent employers from discriminating against employees who use medical marijuana.
"It's about where you're going to expand," the governor said. "Where's your best opportunity for having a workforce that is safe, that is going to get the job done efficiently and have highest level of productivity? So clearly to me, it is a matter of competition for jobs."
Both the act and the amendment state that "an employer shall not discriminate against an individual in hiring, termination, or any term or condition of employment, or otherwise penalize an individual, based upon the individual's past or present status" as a medical marijuana user.
However, the act states that it does not require an "employer to accommodate the ingestion of Cannabis in any workplace or any employee working while under the influence of Cannabis."
The amendment has almost the same wording, with "marijuana" substituted for "cannabis." The act defines cannabis as commonly known as marijuana and describes which parts are considered cannabis.
But Grady Harvell, president and chief operating officer of AFCO Steel, and Doug Wasson, chief executive of Kinco Constructors, said they don't believe they can continue their current drug-testing policies if either measure passes in Arkansas.
AFCO Steel, which has facilities in Van Buren and Little Rock, also is in Colorado, a state in which both medical and recreational marijuana are legal. Terminations because of positive drugs tests have tripled in Colorado, he told reporters.
"Our business requires us to use heavy pieces of steel everyday. We use heavy equipment," Harvell said. "One moment of inattention in our business can create a very serious accident or death."
Butch Rice, chairman of the Arkansas Trucking Association, announced his organization's opposition to both medical marijuana measures, saying they will make a driver shortage worse and pose a danger to every state motorist.
Joe Carter, chief executive of Snyder Environmental, said he wouldn't know how to meet the standards of either measure. In response to a question about how employers handle legal drugs that could impair workers, he said they might be placed on nonhazardous duty.
But unlike with other drugs, there aren't agreed-upon standards of how much marijuana is too much to operate machinery, he said.
"I cannot define what is safe. No one in the medical community can define for me what is safe," he said. "I don't know what to tell my community about the safety of my workforce with respect to impairment with marijuana."
Ryan Denham, deputy director of Arkansans for Compassionate Care, attended the news conference. His organization is behind the Arkansas Medical Cannabis Act.
"We just don't see these type of societal or workforce problems in the 25 states that have passed medical cannabis," he said. "If anything, the medical cannabis laws have been largely a success and have been a net positive for the state economies."
It's up to a doctor to recommend medical marijuana and state what sort of work a patient should engage in, Denham said.
"We don't allow sick and dying patients to be discriminated against, and medical cannabis should be no different," he said.
Reached by phone, David Couch, a Little Rock-based lawyer who is backing the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Amendment, said the business leaders' stance is "based on misconceptions and misinterpretations about marijuana as medicine."
"If marijuana is medicine as state law, it will be treated exactly the same as any other medicine," he said. "Just like they can't come into work on [opiates], they can't come to work under the influence of marijuana. Period. It's ridiculous what they're saying."
Half of the state sales tax revenue derived from the amendment, if enacted, would be placed in a Vocational and Technical Training Special Revenue Fund.
"Conservatively, there's 40 dispensaries and eight cultivation facilities. That's well over 1,000 new jobs for the state of Arkansas," Couch said of his amendment. "I'm creating jobs. I'm training people for new jobs. From a business perspective, it makes total sense."
Seven ballot issues have been approved for Nov. 8. The Arkansas Medical Marijuana Amendment is Issue 6. The Arkansas Medical Cannabis Act is Issue 7.
Twenty-five states, plus Washington, D.C., Guam and Puerto Rico, have enacted laws to allow marijuana use for medical purposes. No Southern state currently allows medical marijuana.
A medical marijuana proposal failed to pass in 2012, but it received 49 percent of the vote.
Hutchinson said Wednesday that he planned to call a future news conference to discuss the "regulatory burden and what it's going to mean in terms of cost to the taxpayers" for both proposals.
Earlier this month, Hutchinson, a former head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, called a news conference with doctors who said recommending medical marijuana to their patients would be a violation of their oath to first do no harm.
Metro on 09/29/2016