What Weed Legalization Really Means

[ElBorrachoInfamoso]

"It's a sloppy business attitude. Focus on the performance of the employee. Is it lacking or subpar? Fire him, problem solved."

In a perfect world, yes. But you don't exactly know who's going to be productive and who isn't at the point of hiring.

Why is there more drug testing for minimum wage jobs than for office jobs paying several times as much? If anything, higher paying jobs with more responsibilities should be stricter. My guess - that the average weed smoker applying for the office job who is otherwise qualified, is not much less productive or risky as an employee as one who abstains. But for a minimum wage job where the qualifications required are minimal, a drug test can serve as an effective way to keep out thiefs and sucky workers.

If minimum wage employers had perfect information about a prospective employee's productivity, then no, a drug test would not be helpful. But they don't, and there are plenty of minimum wage unqualified workers to choose from. So they do it.

I don't think occasional weed smoking in and of itself hurts an employee's performance. But it's not hard to imagine, that at least among certain strata like the non-college educated, it's associated with being a shittier worker. There's plenty of other sociological data that suggests that the bad shit upper middle class people do, they can shrug off without it hurting their life, while it wrecks those of the lower classes - eg fornication and bastardy.

Interestingly enough, many conversations I've had with office type people (both from my jobs and elsewhere) indicates that many, perhaps most, of the white-collar world sees drug testing as a sign of low-status.

That is to say, if you get drug-tested, your job is low-status. Now obviously, as scotian pointed out, this isn't true in the blue-collar world. Doing manual labor which requires sharp reflexes means drug-testing should be mandatory.

But in the white-collar world, if you get drug tested it's because the job is a high-turnover job with no real challenge, so they are just looking for someone who isn't a total fuckup in life so they won't need to get a new person for the job anytime soon.

I worked for one of the big consulting companies before. We didn't drug test employees.

Some clients, especially pharmaceutical companies, were required by law to drug test new employees and contractors. It was my company's policy that if you failed a client's drug test, you would not be fired, you would merely be put on a different project with a client that didn't drug test.

Basically, we were condoning drug use because we knew anyone who made it through our hiring process was able to do the work, even if they did enjoy smoking weed on the weekends.

 

[Laner]

Do you smoke weed? Have you ever smoked weed? I smoke every day. Sometimes before work too and guess what, i'm the most productive member of my team of non pot smokers. I hit the gym daily, cook, pay bills, play violin, help my church, and game broads. Sometimes I'll even have them come home and smoke with me.

The best part is, no one suspects me of being a daily smoker since i'm so active and no one knows i'm stoned in person.

You are coming across as a stereotypical smoker. Skim read a post, dont listen, and come to the total defense of weed. In my experience, long term smokers pick up a delusional view of the world, essentially that everyone sees things their way.

This is not about Frenchie vs The World. Though I am sure that you are more productive stoned than some people are sober, what I am challenging is to see the flip side of being YOU being sober.

I get the feeling that you are young, and if that is the case then keep on smoking but be aware of a couple things. One is that there are people (likely older) and more experienced than you who are watching you. They know you are an addict and are curious why. If you are as productive as you say you are, they are interested in the path you are taking in life, and want to see if you can add long term value to the community.

Two is that most of the other smokers that you associate with will not have the motivation and drive that you do. As you stated already, you have a negative view of non smokers

non pot smokers are a horribly miserable stuck up bunch

. This type of mentality is far more common in smokers than in non smokers. Most non smokers can give shit about other people smoking weed, unless they are friends or family with you, your use causes problems for others, etc.