As more states move toward legalizing marijuana, it remains off limits for truckers

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Updated Jan 21, 2018
“Drivers do call and say, ‘Hey, I have a medical marijuana card,’ or ‘If it’s legal can I use and still drive?’ The answer is no. You are still prohibited from using marijuana.”“Drivers do call and say, ‘Hey, I have a medical marijuana card,’ or ‘If it’s legal can I use and still drive?’ The answer is no. You are still prohibited from using marijuana.”

In one of the first laws of its kind, Maine has enacted rules that forbid the state’s employers from firing employees or refusing job applicants for testing positive for marijuana use. The laws, handed down by the state’s Department of Labor and slated to take effect in February, allow employees to file discrimination-based lawsuits should an employer fire employees or turn away applicants based on the results of marijuana-positive drug tests.

While Maine’s new laws highlight an example of the growing rift between federal and state laws on the issue and the questions swirling around legal cannabis and employee drug screening, the issue is clear for carriers and drivers, says Tim Doyle, vice president of the Maine Motor Transport Association. “We see it as straightforward and simple: You can’t use marijuana and drive a commercial motor vehicle — period,” says Doyle.

MMTA, an affiliate of the American Trucking Associations, in recent months has fielded questions from both its member carriers and drivers operating in the state, says Doyle, “because the information is confusing.”

“Drivers do call and say, ‘Hey, I have a medical marijuana card,’ or ‘If it’s legal can I use and still drive?’ The answer is no. You are still prohibited from using marijuana.”

Maine is one of eight states nationwide to have opened its doors to the emerging marijuana industry, allowing storefronts to sell cannabis products and state residents to possess and use them. Some 29 other states have legalized marijuana for medicinal use. Still, says Joe Rajkovacz of the Western States Trucking Association, federal law requires drivers to pass a drug test, including screening negative for marijuana, to hold a CDL. “Federal drug testing laws trump what the states are doing,” he says. “The feds are the ones that set drug and alcohol testing procedures, return-to-duty practices — this all comes from the federal government. And it’s not just for trucking. Almost all modes of transportation — pipelines, vessel operators, airlines — they all face the same DOT-imposed drug testing requirements.”

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Western States represents carriers in four states — California, Oregon, Washington and Nevada — that have legalized marijuana. While Maine’s law forbidding employers from taking action against workers and job applicants is unique at the state level, cities in California also have been making moves toward that end, says Rajkovacz. “San Fransicsco, in particular, doesn’t even allow random drug testing of employees. With that said, for trucking, none of that stuff matters — what the states do, what these cities do. Look, you can party. You can do what you want. You just can’t drive a truck. It’s that simple.”

The U.S. DOT issued a memo in 2012 stating that marijuana use remained off limits for truck operators, following referendums in California and Washington that legalized marijuana outright. Responding to queries from Overdrive in November 2016 (following successful legalization votes in more states) and again this month, the DOT says its stance hasn’t changed. Any changes to federal drug testing policy for truck drivers would need to start with the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy, the DOT said.

Requests for comment to the ONDCP were not returned.

Even drivers operating exclusively intrastate within states that have legalized marijuana are still subject to federal drug screening requirements, including random drug tests, says Rajkovacz. “The feds dictate to the states that [drivers] must do this to drive a commercial vehicle. It’s a federal requirement to operate a vehicle above 26,000 pounds — you have to be in a drug testing program.”

Doyle acknowledges it’s an issue that’s “going to be discussed for the next several years,” and that “trucking’s position is we’ll follow what happens nationally and follow federal rules.”