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One of the largest employers in the United States, Home Depot, is rewriting its rules regarding employee drug testing. A recent document states that the corporation is discontinuing pre-employment substance testing for the majority of its personnel and will no longer include marijuana in its substance-screening panels.
The revised policies will go into effect on Sept. 1, 2024, as stated in a message from human resources distributed this week. According to the memo, cannabis will no longer be tested on drug panels in the U.S., which includes tests carried out following workplace mishaps or in circumstances where there is a plausible suspicion of impairment.
The memo also clarifies that only external candidates with conditional offers for positions such as corporate security and asset protection will be subject to pre-employment substance testing. The changes, however, have no bearing on federal Department of Transportation employees, who are still subject to the current testing procedures.
News of the policy shift first surfaced on Reddit in the r/HomeDepot forum. A user posted that they had been informed of the new protocol during a morning meeting. The user mentioned that as of Sept. 1, 2024, cannabis would no longer be included in drug tests, even in cases of reasonable suspicion. Additionally, the user noted that drug testing for lift equipment operators would also be discontinued.
The Reddit post quickly garnered attention, with several other users claiming to work at Home Depot confirming that they had heard similar updates at their workplaces.
If the changes are implemented, Home Depot will be among the largest private corporations to do away with cannabis testing for staff members. The corporation has more than 400,000 employees spread across some 2,000 outlets in the United States.
The move by Home Depot is not entirely unprecedented. Amazon, another corporate giant, announced in 2021 that it would no longer test a large number of its workers for cannabis use. Additionally, several states have also enacted laws that restrict or prohibit employee substance testing for cannabis. For instance, new employee protections were implemented in Washington State and California this year.
Employers in California are no longer permitted to inquire about a candidate’s prior cannabis use and cannot penalize employees for lawful use of cannabis outside of work. Meanwhile, Washington State’s law protects employees against discrimination for using legal cannabis before being hired, but it does not shield current employees from facing disciplinary action or termination due to their usage of the drug.
Major cannabis companies such as Cresco Labs Inc. (CSE: CL) (OTCQX: CRLBF) are probably happy that the vestiges of prohibition in the form of pre-employment drug tests are being peeled away by one company after another. With time, the substance could eventually gain the same status as other substances, such as alcohol.
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