Starting next year, job seekers in New York City and Nevada will no longer have to worry about whether they’ll flunk a pre-employment drug test — and lose out on a job — because of that joint they smoked the week before.
Legislators in both jurisdictions recently passed new laws, among the first of their kind, that set guidelines for how employers can treat prospective employees who smoked marijuana prior to taking a job.
These new laws don’t force companies to tolerate workers who are high on the job. But they could spell the beginning of the end for a drug test that’s been commonplace for decades, as lawmakers elsewhere loosen their own weed restrictions and employers take a closer look at the policies they have in place when considering a job candidate’s pot use.