New Mexico lawmakers have advanced a bill that would further protect medical marijuana patients in the state from being penalized at work for off-duty use of cannabis.
The House Health & Human Services Committee on Friday approved the legislation from House Majority Floor Leader Reena Szczepanski (D) in a 6-2 vote.
“Our first responders are dealing with stress, chronic pain, insomnia, and PTSD,” Szczepanski, who previously worked at the reform organization Drug Policy Alliance, told Marijuana Moment. “Barring them from using medical cannabis on their own time to manage symptoms is incredibly harmful and unnecessary. It’s time to make a change.”
Under the bill, an “employee shall not be considered to be impaired by cannabis solely because of the presence of metabolites or components of cannabis,” it says.
The measure would further prohibit random drug testing for marijuana, though patients could be screened if there’s reasonable suspicion that cannabis was used on the clock resulting in “significant damage to property.”
The committee on Friday adopted a minor amendment that replaces a line in the bill that had said a “drug test for cannabis shall be reviewed by a medical review officer who shall determine if the reason for a positive test has a legitimate medical explanation.”
Under the new language, the bill now says that an employer “shall follow the cannabis impairment guidelines when testing for cannabis impairment.”
The measure also stipulates that the state Department of Health must “assist the workforce solutions department in developing cannabis impairment guidelines that are based on the most reliable research- or evidence-based cannabis impairment indicators, including the evaluation of physical symptoms and psychomotor and cognitive performance.”
“The workforce solutions department shall inform private employers of this section and provide information related to the most recent advances in testing protocols for determining cannabis impairment,” it says. “The department of finance and administration shall disseminate the cannabis impairment guidelines to state agencies and political subdivisions of the state.”
The panel had heard testimony earlier last week from labor leaders who represent firefighters and other public sector workers who would be protected by the bill.
Miguel Tittmann, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters Local 244, said that the group’s members who are military veterans will especially benefit from new workplace protections, pointing out that they disproportionately suffer from PTSD and pain.
“Shifts is how we work. Sometimes we don’t sleep for 48 hours,” he said. “All of these ailments that our members get diagnosed with and prescribed different medicines having cannabinoids in them,” he said.
Random drug testing for marijuana “is unconstitutional and unfair,” Tittmann said. “They will lose their job, they will lose their livelihood, they will lose their pension. And that’s the crux of this.”
Theodore Ygbuhay, the union’s vice president, called cannabis a “safer alternative to opiates and other medications” that firefighters might use to treat their ailments.
“I think anytime that we’re just relying on a random urinalysis test that is actually not proving current impairment,” he said. “It could go back 30 days.”
Meanwhile, commissioners in New Mexico’s most populous county recently approved policy details of a plan to stop testing and punishing most government employees for off-hours marijuana use. Bernalillo County, where Albuquerque is located, was the first public body in the state to implement the reform following the legalization of cannabis in 2021.
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The committee vote on the statewide cannabis employment legislation comes as a bipartisan proposal to establish a therapeutic psilocybin program in New Mexico had an initial hearing before a Senate panel, with lawmakers voting unanimously to advance the bill.
Last year, New Mexico lawmakers passed, and Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) endorsed, a resolution requesting that state officials research the therapeutic potential of psilocybin and explore the creation of a regulatory framework to provide access to the psychedelic.
The prior year, the House Health and Human Services Committee passed a bill that called for the creation of a state body to study the possibility of launching a psilocybin therapy program for certain patients. That measure did not advance further in the 2023 session, however.
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