Applicants for employment in Washington gained new protections on Monday as a new law barring discrimination based on a worker’s off-duty cannabis use went into effect throughout the state. The legislation, Senate Bill 5123, was signed into law by Democratic Governor Jay Inslee in May 2023 after being passed by state lawmakers three weeks earlier.

Under the new law, employers in Washington are barred from taking action against newly hired workers for using cannabis off the job and away from the workplace. The prohibition also applies to new employees who have failed an employer-required drug screening for non-psychoactive cannabis metabolites in their hair, blood, urine or other bodily fluids.

Pre-employment drug screenings for cannabis will still be allowed for workers applying for certain safety-sensitive positions. The legislation also includes exceptions for law enforcement officers, firefighters and other first responders, as well as candidates for positions in certain industries such as airlines and aerospace. Jobs that require a federal background check or security clearance are also exempt from the law.

Drug Tests Still Allowed for Current Workers

The new law also does not affect workplace policies that require current workers to undergo drug tests for cannabis use while off the job. As the bill was being considered by the Washington state legislature last year, Democratic Senator Karen Keiser, the bill’s sponsor, noted that the legislation does not apply to employees after the hiring process is completed. 

“If your employer wants to test you every week after you’re hired, they’re still able to do that,” Keiser said in a statement quoted by the Seattle Times. “This is simply opening the front door of getting into a job. Because too many people who see that they have to take a drug test to even apply, don’t even apply.”

Supporters of the legislation note that most currently available drug screenings for cannabis do not detect or measure impairment from marijuana use. Instead, they rely on detecting metabolites present in the system after a person uses weed. Burl Bryson, the executive director of The Cannabis Alliance, told lawmakers at a public hearing in January that potential job candidates can consume cannabis legally “and still test positive for weeks later.”

“If the same approach were applied to alcohol, employers would refuse employment to anyone who enjoyed a beer or glass of wine on the weekend,” Bryson said.

“It simply doesn’t make sense to base an employment decision on that kind of unreliable outcome and test,” Keiser told her colleagues on the Senate floor before they voted in favor of the legislation.

Paul Armentano, the deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), said that laws for workplace drug screenings must evolve as cannabis is legalized in states across the nation.

“Urine screening for off-the-job cannabis consumption has never been an evidence-based policy,” he said in a statement from the cannabis policy reform advocacy group in May. “Rather, this discriminatory practice is a holdover from the zeitgeist of the 1980s’ war on drugs. But times have changed; attitudes have changed, and in many places, the marijuana laws have changed. It is time for workplace policies to adapt to this new reality and to cease punishing employees for activities they engage in during their off-hours that pose no workplace safety threat.”

“Those who consume alcohol legally and responsibly while away from their jobs do not suffer sanctions from their employers unless their work performance is adversely impacted,” Armentano added. “Those who legally consume cannabis should be held to a similar standard.”

NORML noted that numerous studies have shown that workers who use cannabis while off the job do not pose an increased safety risk compared with employees who do not consume marijuana. In a detailed review of the relevant data, the US National Academy of Sciences found that “There is no evidence to support a statistical association between cannabis use and occupational accidents or injuries.”

Washington is not the only state where laws protecting workers who use cannabis while off the job are going into effect with the dawn of the new year. In California, a new law to prohibit employers from taking action against employees who test positive for cannabis in a hair or urine test also went into effect on Monday.

Nevada and Michigan have also recently adopted legislation to protect new hires from pre-employment discrimination based on their use of cannabis. Other jurisdictions including Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Montana, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island have expanded policies to limit cannabis testing for both new hires and existing employees. 

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The word “marijuana” will be stricken from all legislation in the state of Washington under a bill recently passed by state lawmakers. The measure, House Bill 1210, will replace the term “marijuana” with the word “cannabis” in all state statutes after being signed into law by Democratic Governor Jay Inslee last month. 

Democratic state Representative Melanie Morgan, the sponsor of the legislation, told her colleagues in the House last year that the word “marijuana” has racial undertones that go back nearly a century.

“The term ‘marijuana’ itself is pejorative and racist,” Morgan said. “As recreational marijuana use became more popular, it was negatively associated with Mexican immigrants.”

“Even though it seems simple because it’s just one word, the reality is, we’re healing the wrongs that were committed against Black and Brown people around cannabis,” she added.

Racist Language in Legislation

Morgan said that the word’s racist connotation was initiated by Harry Anslinger, the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, which later became the Drug Enforcement Administration. Anslinger was an instrumental force in the passage of the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, which began the U.S. prohibition of cannabis.

“It was … Anslinger that said, and I quote, ‘Marijuana is the most violent causing drug in the history of mankind. And most marijuana users are Negroes, Hispanic, Caribbean, and entertainers. Their satanic music, jazz, and swing results from marijuana usage,’” Morgan said during a legislative hearing.

State Representative Emily Wicks said the bill can help change how conversations about cannabis are framed.

“Although we call it a technical fix, I think it does a lot to undo, or at least correct in some effort, some of the serious harms around this language,” Wicks said.

Joy Hollingsworth, who owns Hollingsworth Cannabis Company with her family, told KIRO television news that the word “marijuana” is an unwelcome term for many people in communities of color.

“It had been talked about for a long time in our community about how that word demonizes the cannabis plant,” said Hollingsworth, who learned about the negative association of the word from her mother.

“She was the one who educated us on the term and how it was derogatory, and we shouldn’t use it anymore,” Hollingsworth said. “We have a lot of people, especially in the Black community, that went to prison over cannabis for years, that were locked up, separated from their nuclear family, which is huge.”

Hollingsworth said that House Bill 1210 is a step in the right direction. But she would also like to see more action on social equity in cannabis from state lawmakers.

“We’ll take any win, right? But we don’t want to get caught up on the performative equity piece where we’re just talking about words and not actual legislation and policy,” Hollingsworth said.

One possibility would be to invest cannabis taxes in communities disproportionately impacted by the War on Drugs.

“We will feel like the industry has paid off when we see those funds get put into college scholarships,” Hollingsworth said. “Maybe a family wanted to buy a home, and they were from the Central District of Seattle, and they wanted to go back there because they were priced out. They could get a loan from those funds. Thinking about creative ways to make impactful scalable solutions in our community is what I’m looking for.” 

Cannabis Industry and Advocates Support Bill

House Bill 1210 was supported by state and national cannabis reform advocacy groups and industry representatives, including the Craft Cannabis Coalition (CCC), a Tacoma-based retail trade group.

“Our association is supportive of social equity in the cannabis industry and strongly recognize the harm the war on drugs caused,” CCC Executive Director Adán Espino Jr. told The Center Square in an email. “We do not feel as strongly about the term ‘marijuana’ as others seem to, but we do appreciate the transition to the term ‘cannabis’ as the industry continues to develop and professionalize. If the term ‘marijuana’ has fallen out of practice, that is just the reality of it.”

Tiffany Watkins, a member of the National Cannabis Industry Association’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Committee, said that Washington needs to make more substantive efforts at social equity in the cannabis industry.

“While it’s definitely time to steer permanently away from terms based in racism, replacing marijuana with cannabis is merely a drop in the ocean when it comes to correcting the wrong done by the war on drugs,” she said via email. “Much more attention needs to be brought to how a state with over 10 years of legal cannabis operations still has no social equity program in place to acknowledge the barriers to entry for its BIPOC [Black, indigenous, people of color] individuals.”

In 2020, the Washington legislature established the Washington Task Force on Social Equity in Cannabis to develop policies and recommendations to support social equity in the state’s cannabis industry. The panel is currently working on proposals to provide grants to social equity applicants to help fund the launch and licensing of new cannabis businesses. House Bill 1210 goes into effect in June.

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