Use of marijuana for medical reasons may be legal under Oregon state law, but a state lawmaker says employers should still be allowed to fire workers for testing positive for marijuana on drug tests even if they are medical users.

The Associated Press reported Feb. 8 that the bill would allow workers to be fired for positive drug tests arising from off-premises drug use as well as for marijuana use or impairment on the job. "I spent 20 years as a professional, commercial helicopter pilot," said Sen. Betsy Johnson (D-Scappoose). "It is a zero-tolerance-for-drugs industry ... to assure a safe operation in the kind of very dangerous work that we were doing."

Opponents said the measure would legalize discrimination against medical-marijuana users, who may have detectable amounts of the drug in their bodies even a month after use. "It presumes that everyone who is using medical marijuana is impaired while at the same time individuals using other medications are not," said Andrea Meyer of the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon.

Sen. Floyd Prozanski (D-Eugene) said employers should rely on obvious signs of impairment, not drug tests, to initiate punitive job actions. That argument didn't sit well with J.L. Wilson, the Oregon director of the National Federation of Independent Business. "There's a whole host of plaintiff's attorneys looking for business, and this is another avenue for them if you have impaired workers," Wilson said.

Last year, the Oregon Supreme Court ruled that Columbia Forest Products was within its rights to fire millwright and medical-marijuana user Robert Washburn after a positive drug test.