Puerto Rico Rolls Back Workplace Protections for Medical Cannabis Patients. Who’s Left Out?

Puerto Rico’s new Act 204-2026 creates an exception to workplace protections for registered medical cannabis patients in certain safety-sensitive transportation roles. The law does not eliminate the medical cannabis program or protections for patients generally, but it gives employers a new legal basis for employment decisions involving covered workers.

In Puerto Rico, being a registered medical cannabis patient no longer guarantees the same workplace protections for everyone. A new law allows employers to apply an exception to those protections for certain transportation workers, even if they’re registered patients using marijuana for medical purposes.

On October 11, Governor Jenniffer González Colón signed Act 204-2026, which amends Puerto Rico’s medical cannabis laws to create a specific exception for workers in safety-sensitive transportation roles. The measure covers truck drivers, school bus drivers, taxi drivers, and rideshare drivers, among other jobs involving the transportation of people and goods.

As reported by Cannabis Magazine, the new provision doesn’t eliminate Puerto Rico’s medical cannabis program or strip all patients of their workplace protections. It does, however, give employers a new legal basis for employment decisions that might otherwise be considered discriminatory.

Medical Cannabis and Employment: What’s Changing Under the New Law?

To understand the change, we have to go back to 2021, when Puerto Rico passed Act 15-2021, establishing workplace protections for registered medical cannabis patients.

The law recognized these patients as a protected class under employment discrimination laws. That means employers cannot refuse to hire, fire, or penalize someone simply because they’re an authorized medical cannabis patient. But those protections were never absolute.

The legislation already included exceptions for situations in which cannabis use posed a real threat to others, interfered with essential job duties, or jeopardized federal licenses or funding, as well as cases involving the use or possession of cannabis during working hours without written authorization.

Now, the new law explicitly adds certain transportation roles to that list of exceptions.

To invoke the provision, an employer must demonstrate, under the preponderance of the evidence standard, that the person performs or intends to perform those duties. In other words, simply working for a transportation company isn’t enough. What matters is the actual job they’re doing.

The key distinction is that the law doesn’t broadly prohibit drivers from being medical cannabis patients. Instead, it limits the workplace protections available to them as registered patients.

Road Safety vs. Patients’ Rights

The measure, originally introduced as Senate Bill 896, received support from Puerto Rico’s health authorities.

According to the Puerto Rico Senate, the Department of Health and the Medical Cannabis Regulatory Board endorsed the proposal during an April legislative hearing, arguing that it prioritized transportation safety.

Still, the amendment raises questions about what it could mean for people who rely on cannabis as part of their medical treatment.

One issue is the distinction between using cannabis and actually being impaired while on the job. Being a registered medical marijuana patient doesn’t automatically mean someone is unfit to drive or work; yet the new exception could create conflicts even when cannabis use takes place outside working hours.

Questions also remain about how the new provision will be applied in individual cases and what evidence will be considered sufficient to justify an employment decision.

For now, Puerto Rico’s medical cannabis program remains intact, as do the general workplace protections for registered patients. What’s changing is how far those protections extend in certain jobs.

Cover photo: pedrik, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons // Edited with AI

<p>The post Puerto Rico Rolls Back Workplace Protections for Medical Cannabis Patients. Who’s Left Out? first appeared on High Times.</p>