A recent survey has found more Colorado employers are relaxing their marijuana testing policies and fewer of them are firing workers who test positive for weed compared to a few years ago.
Only 48 percent of Colorado companies with “well-defined” drug testing policies will fire a worker for a first-time positive test for pot, according to data collected by the Employers Council in November. That’s down from 53 percent in 2014. Meanwhile, 5 percent of companies surveyed have dropped marijuana from their pre-employment drug screening program in the last two years and 2 percent have stopped screening for it altogether.
The council — a Denver nonprofit organization formerly known as the Mountain States Employers Council — has polled Colorado employers on their drug testing policies with a special emphasis on marijuana every other year since 2014. That’s the year recreational pot sales became legalin Colorado after voters approved Amendment 64 in 2012.
“A lot of companies began testing for the first time (in 2014), but it seems like it has calmed down a lot since then because the sky has not actually fallen,” Curtis Graves, an attorney with the Employers Council, said of this year’s survey findings. “Pre-employment drug testing seems to be down across the board but particularly for marijuana.”