Drug testing is a huge racket. Let’s just be very clear about. There is something that is generally not widely known, and that is that marijuana metabolized, not the actual active ingredients, stays in your system depending on how much you use for a week or two, or even a month if you’re a really heavy user. That is in contrast to cocaine, heroin, etc, that only stay in your system for about 24 hours. If you are subject to drug testing and you use marijuana on a Saturday night, Monday morning you can test positive for marijuana. If you use cocaine, heroin, LSD, all the other illicit drugs on Saturday night, come Monday morning, you can be drug free.
This is a perverse incentive. And this, of course, also has an effect. If somebody has flunked a drug test for marijuana, this can further damage their employment prospects. You get fired from your current job because you smoked marijuana two weeks ago. You get fired. The guy who used the cocaine a day ago, escapes. This is how the system works.
Of course, once you flunk the test and you get in a downward spiral hope also goes. And of course, who else gives these tests? Oh, the probation officers.
So you have situations in which people who are unemployed – and because of the drug war – are unemployable – have to go and pay to be drug tested, specifically for marijuana, or they go back to jail, but they can’t pay for the drug test. And so it goes. This, folks, is how the world works. Whether or not drug testing for anything is justifiable is one question. But the idea of using the same urine tests or hair tests for marijuana is so totally counterproductive with everything that they say they want to do. If this drug testing is used, they know this is having perverse effects, let’s stop.
But no, they keep on doing the same thing. Now, as it happens that more and more companies are realizing that if they don’t hire people that use cannabis, they’re going to exclude a whole lot of highly qualified people. In a tight labor market, which may or may not involve unskilled workers.
Everybody focus a lot on two things: coding and how to cheat on a drug test. That’s the key to your future kids; learn how to code and how to cheat on a drug test. This is how things work in the real world. If you can waive a magic wand and make marijuana go away, I can definitely argue to not do it. But until you can come up with that magic wand…
Let’s deal in the real world, that you got millions of people using something that is less dangerous than almost any other mind altering substance out there. I don’t want to try to make these people unemployable.
