Sask. man forced off medicinal marijuana by employer

Company nurses and lawyers told Jarett that he couldn’t come to work with traces of THC (50 nanograms) in his blood. They also told Jarett they couldn’t have anyone impaired at work. At the levels set out in the company policy, Jarett said it would be impossible to continue his prescription.

“I was using my prescription in the evening around 7 to 8 p.m. and then I would be back to work at 7 a.m. so there was an 11 to 12-hour window before I would come back to work from using it and I wasn’t impaired,” Jarett said.

Jarett had no choice but to oblige with the company’s request.

“I had to do what they said. I had to stop taking marijuana … I had to contact my license producer and get them to send me verification that I cancelled my prescription and go for a drug test showing there was nothing in my system … then I could go back to work.”

Kirk Tousaw with Tousaw Law Corporation in Vancouver said he’s dealt with a stack of cases involving medicinal marijuana and in Jarett’s case, what the employer is doing is downright wrong.

“To prevent an employee from consuming prescribed medicine outside of the workplace is absolutely in my view, unlawful discrimination under human rights legislation,” Tousaw said. “This is the kind of stigmatization that we encounter around medicinal cannabis because of its history as a prohibitive substance and because of the deep discrimination and hysterical fear-mongering that comes from people who don’t understand either the effects of cannabis or don’t understand how it can be used as medication.”

Despite Jarett back at work full-time, his cluster headaches are back and nothing he’s tried since his prescription for medicinal marijuana has worked.

“The doctor then put me on the least harmful anti-depressant he could prescribe. I started taking that and that was a roller coaster – I’d have night sweats, I’d get two hours of sleep, I was getting racing heart, I felt I was falling forward … all sorts of side effects from the anti-depressant,” he said.

Tousaw said it’s very likely cases like Jarett’s will continue to come up as more and more Canadians turn to medicinal marijuana to cure ailments. Health Canada estimates that the number of lawful medicinal marijuana consumers sits between 50,000 and 70,000 Canadians, and that number is expected to jump to 400,000 by 2024.

“So with that kind of growth I think you’ll see spillover into different areas of law, such as employment law and whether or not employer can discriminate against medical marijuana users,” Tousaw said.

Tousaw adds asking Jarett to get off his marijuana prescription is the same as asking employees not to consume alcohol or any other prescription drug.

“There’s a moral imperative you shouldn’t discriminate against your employees who are using medicine to treat serious medical conditions under the support and prescription of their physician, that’s un-Canadian, it’s bad form and bad citizenship and likely unlawful,” he said. “We’re going to have to start grappling with this in an adult way. Simply having the ‘hear no evil see no evil’ mentality and taking no-tolerance policies that are not based on facts isn’t going to cut it.”

Jarett says he’s filed a complaint to the Human Right Commission against his employer over the incident.

“Our federal law allows this so I don’t see why or how an employer can do this and say you can’t have this prescription. I got it through a licensed producer with Health Canada, what more do you want?”

panews@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @princealbertnow

by François Biber

Sask. man forced off medicinal marijuana by employer

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