Joseph Casias, 29, was fired in November from a Walmart store in Battle Creek, Mich., after marijuana was detected in a routine drug screening that he underwent after he sprained his knee at work.Casias, who was the store's 2008 associate of the year, said he legally used marijuana to reduce pain associated with his disease and was never under the influence while at work.
I hold no brief against medical marijuana. It's a prescribed drug like any other prescribed drug.
However, it's still against Federal law to possess it, regardless of whether or not the Federal Government has stated that it won't enforce the law in states that have passed a medical marijuana statute (which is the basic problem here; Michigan has passed such a law).
If I were Wal-Mart, my position would be that there is nothing stopping the Federal Government from making a 180° turn and starting to enforce the statute again, and furthermore, that if the Federal Government doesn't want to enforce the statute, it should repeal or amend it accordingly instead of just saying it won't enforce it. Till then, it remains against Federal law to possess it, and Wal-Mart is, in my opinion correctly, walking the straight and narrow. They can't afford to do otherwise.
I agree with Wal-Mart -- it's a shame they have to do this and I sympathize with Mr. Casias (a friend of mine is using medical marijuana to abate pain from pancreatic cancer). But at the same time, they have a policy in place and the employee failed a drug test on the job.
Blame this one on Øbama, not on Wal-Mart. The administration won't press to legalize medical marijuana, so they can suck it up.
