The Midland Area Chamber of Commerce gave an opportunity this week for local business professionals to get a jump on understanding the effects of marijuana legalization with an expert on the topic.
Kevin A. Sabet, Ph.D., former advisor to three U.S. presidential administrations and president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, spoke on the cost of legal marijuana to businesses at the chamber’s September installment of the Issues & Answers Program Series.
“Our chamber has not taken a position on this issue,” Diane Middleton, the chamber’s executive director, said while introducing Sabet. “He is the foremost expert on this issue in the country. He is the one we want to hear from.”
Sabet told the crowd they are ahead of the curve by talking about marijuana legalization now.He was quick to point out legalization is different from decriminalization, and said research by SAM shows many think they are voting for decriminalization.
“What is being voted on is making a business of pot,” he said. “At the end of the day, this is a business and it is about money for the people that are promoting this … This is about a small group of people getting very rich.”
Sabet said it’s important to look at the other legal drugs in the country when considering the industrialization of marijuana — alcohol, tobacco and prescription medication. “Those haven’t turned out so good for us as a country,” from numerous perspectives, he said.
He called tobacco the biggest public health crisis of the century after its industrialization 100 years ago with endorsements from doctors that tobacco was a medicine. “My warning is we’re walking into that same trap with marijuana,” he said.
Today’s marijuana also has much more of the active ingredient THC, from 2 percent THC in the 1960s to 16 percent being considered a low amount of THC now in Colorado. Products made from marijuana can have as much as 98 percent concentrated THC.
Depending on the person, THC can remain in the system about a week, and for sure for three days after use, Sabet said. “That is a huge headache for employers,” because they cannot prove when marijuana was last used, or if it was used on the job, leaving employers to show the employee was impaired.
It also comes in numerous forms, including edibles which have no smell, making it impossible to detect use on the job.
The marijuana lobby promised to make workers’ right to use a priority after a 2014 decision by the Colorado Supreme Court that established employers can fire employees for off-the-job marijuana use, Sabet said, chronicling other state courts’ decisions regarding marijuana use.
Sabet listed various other findings about people who use marijuana, including they:
• Miss work more frequently and have more disciplinary problems than their colleagues,
• Are 40 percent more likely to have missed at least one day of work in the last month due to illness or injury,
• Are 106 percent more likely to have missed at least one day of work in the last month because they “just didn’t want to be there,” and
• Create significantly more safety problems at the workplace than non-users, including industrial accidents and injuries.
For a run down of the statistics, go to www.learnaboutsam.org
“The question is where do we want to go with marijuana?” Sabet said. “We want to be a resource,” he said of SAM.
credit:ourmidland.com
