
Marijuana testing of job applicants is barred by NYC - daegloe
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/nyregion/marijuana-drug-testing-nyc.html
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perfunctory
"I believe private businesses should have the power to determine their own
hiring practices"

In that case I want to have the power to determine my own job acceptance
practices. I want my hiring manager to take a drug test too. After all, I
don't wanna end up working for a drug edict.

The asymmetry of employer/employee relationship is just astonishing.

~~~
dymk
That's not _really_ asymmetrical, in the same way that e.g. wage information
is. You can refuse to take their test (and not be hired) the same way they can
refuse to take your test (and you refuse to work for them).

That being said, I believe that weed usage not being comparable to alcohol
usage outside of the workplace doesn't make sense. I think it only makes sense
to test for harder drugs e.g. opiates and amphetamines.

~~~
stordoff
> I think it only makes sense to test for harder drugs e.g. opiates and
> amphetamines.

Why? Why is it any of my employer's business what I do outside of work?

~~~
dymk
Same reason I don't let crack addicts into my house. They're going to steal
from me.

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thr0waway19233
I'm one of tech leads for a company that doesn't really deal with anything
that sensitive but routinely drug tests, I'm convinced it's just a way to get
rid of employees they don't want. I have failed the drug tests 5 out of 5
times with substances significantly more frowned upon than cannabis and have
yet to receive anything more than a chuckle when being handed the results
while at the same time I've seen multiple others fired on their first offence.
Go figure.

~~~
dsgriffin
Not from the U.S (assuming you are) and don't know how it's employed exactly,
but don't most states there already have at-will employment where they can get
rid of people for no/very little reason anyway?

~~~
AlexTWithBeard
They can get rid of people for _any_ reason, not for _no_ reason.

In real life things are even more complex: in case of a bitter divorce an
employer will have some trouble trying to convince a judge that they fired a
programmer because he didn't like classical music. And then programmer's
attorney will present his version of events with some racial twist added...

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dev_north_east
Is drug testing common in the US? Here in the UK, outside of certain fields,
I've never heard of it and would laugh if I were asked to.

~~~
danaliv
Depends on the industry and the class of job. In software and white collar
work in general it’s almost unheard of. Go farther down the class scale and it
becomes very common.

~~~
anonu
In every bank job I started in NYC I had to take a drug test before I started.
Anecdotal... But white collar jobs still do it.

I'm also pretty sure most government jobs require it periodically.

~~~
koolba
I’ve never heard of a finance industry job that required repeated drug
testing. Only at first hire time.

That also makes it kind of obvious that someone is getting ready to jump ship
if they stop smoking marijuana for a couple weeks.

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Abishek_Muthian
Few days back a lady reported on reddit that she stored clear pee in an off
brand 5 hour energy bottle and put it her vagina before interview for
maintaining temperature[1]. It apparently got struck and medical intervention
was needed.

I guess she must have got the idea from people who have been successful
earlier with such attempts, so perhaps the test security at jobs aren't fool-
proof.

[1]:[https://www.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/bbbzpt/tifu_by_puttin...](https://www.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/bbbzpt/tifu_by_putting_a_5_hour_energy_in_my_vagina/)

~~~
Gibbon1
Piss tests for women are utterly demeaning. In a perfect world we'd throw all
the people involved in prison.

~~~
jack_pp
Are you implying it's less demeaning when it happens to men? If so, what's
your reasoning?

~~~
PlasticTank
If I had to take a guess I'd say they have harder time aiming, relatively easy
for a male to piss into a small pot, a woman is probably going to end up
pissing all over her hand. Fun.

~~~
cimmanom
That’s not actually how it works. It’s perfectly possible for a woman to pee
into those little cups without making a mess (I’m a woman and I’ve done it
plenty of times at the doctors office).

Speaking of which, peeing into a cup for true medical purposes is not more
demeaning to women than to men (except when doctors won’t believe you when you
assure them that it would be a medical miracle for you to be pregnant, and
they make you take a pregnancy test anyway, wtf). Drug tests are demeaning,
period, but gender has nothing to do with it.

For those who aren’t too squeamish: the female urethra does not spray like a
shower head just because it’s recessed. It runs like a faucet. We may not be
able to easily control the direction of the flow, but it’s easy enough to
locate the opening and determine the direction by peeing a bit and stopping,
and then place the cup to catch the flow.

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blackflame7000
The drug test is pretty flawed since the fat solubility of THC metabolites
makes it stay in your body exponentially longer than harder drugs. Not sure
why downvotes, its a fact google it.

~~~
maze-le
I don't know about THC, but I've been tested positively for Amphetamine before
and didn't take it or any medication that is a structural derivate of it. This
is a problem that is not very well known, even doctors rarely know how
unreliable drug tests can be. Amphetamine-derivates for example have one of
the highest percentage of false positives: ~15% -- a lot of molecules in your
body have a structural similiarity with the metabolites of the substance.

If you are ever tested positively for an Amphetamine-like substance, and you
know you didn't take it -- you should insist on a second test right there on
the spot.

~~~
icelancer
People test positive for all sorts of amphetamines because the test is a joke,
overly broad, and unreliable to boot as you pointed out. Anyone who has
asthma-related medication is a lock to fail, especially if they take pills
like Bronkaid.

~~~
burger_moon
Is it because of the ephedrine in the bronkaid that causes the test failures?

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briandear
This is sensible. As long as the safety sensitive professions are exempt from
the ban (as they are in this proposal,) this is good policy.

~~~
flukus
The problem is differentiating current intoxication/high, which is obviously
bad in most jobs from someone who had a joint Saturday night two weeks ago,
which has no impact on there work.

~~~
culturestate
There are some situations where even being high _at work_ isn’t really a
problem, as long as you aren’t _too high._

Almost every retail job on earth, for example. I wouldn’t care if my cashier
was high as long as they can function.

~~~
asdff
I've gotten some great, productive work done while pretty up there. For me, it
removes inertia and I just get straight into my work and stay in it until I've
gotten enough done for the day. It was my secret weapon during finals week
when I had to crank out term papers for classes I wasn't especially interested
in.

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LionBlack8
According to this article [https://www.ncsm.nl/english/health/pass-urine-drug-
test](https://www.ncsm.nl/english/health/pass-urine-drug-test) , marijuana can
be detected in your urine usually for 30-45 days. To speed up one's detoxing
process, one should drink a lot of green tea and just be active.

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loteck
Should cannabis use should be treated any differently by societies or
governments than alcohol use? I'm struggling to come up with any exceptions.

~~~
lainga
It has secondhand smoke problems (like tobacco) which alcohol does not

~~~
codezero
THC has many more delivery methods than smoking leaf.

Edibles. Tinctures. Vapes. Salves.

Your argument isn’t very informed.

~~~
thecatspaw
A vape still produces vapor though which can be absorbed by strangers.

Also smoking leaf is the most common method by far

~~~
saiya-jin
Only because thats usually how you end up with it in countries where its
illegal. Common Joe doesn't have the skills and equipment to turn it to
something non-harmful for consumption. I am amazed how quickly in US the oil
vaping industry had developed, and how good the products are compared to old
school consumption.

Compared to Netherland where this is cca legal for many years, and you can
still only buy plants or cakes (which isn't ideal for quite a few reasons, ie
hard to get right dosage first time). In fact, oil vaping cartridges are
illegal there (no sense whatsoever, you can buy hashish which can be very
potent).

I can guarantee you, tons of people who don't smoke cigarettes vastly prefer
consumption with 0 carcinogens from burning the plant.

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Simulacra
This sounds like both a good and a bad thing. Of course if you’re going to be
operating heavy machinery, or something where lives are at risk, you should
not be on any drugs. But if you’re sitting as an office worker, or cashier at
Diane Reed, I think drug testing is a waste of time

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dalbasal
Is there any general legislation relating to arbitrary
restriction/intrusion/inquisitiveness of people's personal life?

For a random example, can employees be required to share their workout
schedule, or fitbit data?

Is drug testing specifically legal?

~~~
lotsofpulp
You can reduce the employer paid portion of health insurance premiums and then
have the health insurance company reimburse the employees that share their
health data, and then the employer reimburse the health insurance company for
these rebates.

In my experience, you already get $20 to $40 per month for going to the gym a
certain number of times or doing a certain number of steps per month.

~~~
dalbasal
That would be a workaround though, no? Ie, you're sharing this with an
insurance company, not an employer.

What law(s) would this workaround be working around? Ie, would it be illegal
to make sharing this data (regardless of insurance) a condition of employment.
I don't mean specific that are covered by other laws (discrimination, medical
privacy), just an arbitrary thing an employer might want to know/control about
an employee's personal life.

~~~
lotsofpulp
Presumably, employers aren’t experts at knowing what results in lower
healthcare costs, plus it would avoid health data from being shared with
another entity unnecessarily. It would also be better PR since health
insurance needs your health data anyway, so nothing is changing other than
people paying less for being healthier.

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syntaxing
I'm kind of curious, is it common for software engineers in the East coast get
drug tested? I'm a MechE and I almost always get tested.

~~~
MiddleEndian
I am a software engineer Massachusetts and I was tested when I interned at
Intel in Hudson, MA, perhaps because I would be going to their factory on
occasion. Never anywhere else, including at a defense company.

As an intern I wasn't really in a place to turn down a test, but letting a
company examine my bodily fluids is pretty insane.

