With November elections on the horizon, the debate over medical marijuana is getting contentious.
On Tuesday evening at Sacred Heart Medical Center, Jerry Gjesvold, manager of Employer Services with Serenity Lane, hosted a forum, “Medical Marijuana and Drugs in the Workplace.” He acknowledged the issue’s timeliness, asking attendees to “let your thoughts and feelings about this issue be known to your legislators … this is going to be a heated issue with the upcoming legislative session.”
Gjesvold specializes in policy related to substance abuse in business and industry and writes a monthly Register-Guard column on alcohol and drug-related topics. According to the Serenity Lane Web site, Gjesvold “weaves his own personal experience of addiction and recovery into his presentations.”
Gjesvold held the forum in the face of several initiatives that would drastically change the current structure of the Oregon Medical Marijuana Program.
Voter Power, the group that got a 1998 initiative onto the ballot that allowed the use of medical marijuana in Oregon, is now supporting a new cause. Initiative 28 would introduce a system of marijuana dispensaries throughout the state, making the medicinal marijuana more readily available to patients.
Various interest groups are gathering signatures for other initiatives whose purposes range from the complete abolishment of OMMP, to the implementation of industrial hemp production and the legalization of cannabis sales in liquor stores to OMMP cardholders.
Gjesvold, who thinks the program has been exploited, did not discount other aspects of the medical marijuana argument.
“Certainly the medical marijuana program here in the state has posed some interesting challenges for both proponents and opponents,” he said. “I personally think marijuana has some medicinal value, and it probably does help some people. I have become a little more critical recently, with some folks taking advantage of the program.”
His presentation raised concerns surrounding Oregon’s Medical Marijuana Program, exemplified most by the legal conflicts between OMMP cardholders and some employers’ federal Drug Free Workplace Programs.
Two court cases in Oregon, each involving an OMMP cardholder being terminated by her employer for testing positive in THC tests, may come to define the state’s position on OMMP patients’ rights in the workplace.
In September, the Oregon Supreme court threw out one of the cases, positing the cardholder who was fired did not have a chronic medical condition and therefore didn’t have the right to sue. This left the state of the law on accommodating the use of medical marijuana at work in flux by not directly addressing the use of medical marijuana in the workplace. The courts heard arguments for the second of those cases in March 2009, but haven’t made a ruling.
“Once that decision is made we’ll have greater clarity, hopefully, on what employers can and cannot do,” Gjesvold said.
The public forum provided a platform for Eugene residents to express their opinions on the potential changes in medical marijuana law.
At one point in the evening, two attendees argued vehemently, bringing the presentation to a standstill until a third attendee slammed on the table with his fists and whipped around in his chair.
“I came here for information,” he yelled. “Let’s leave the legislation for the legislators!”
Jennifer Alexander, an OMMP cardholder, said public awareness on the issue could make the difference when it comes to resolving the complicated policy debate.
“I don’t think these things are out in the public enough because until I became a patient I wasn’t aware of a number of things going on with this, and then I became a patient and I’m like, ‘Oh, you guys have been doing what, for how long?’”
Alan Ericson, another OMMP advocate, agreed.
“Absolutely!” he said. “This issue hasn’t been publicly debated on any kind of level, other than locally, and it needs to be.”
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