Publications

Welcome to the HRMinute. Today I want to talk a little bit about marijuana. Not the legalization of recreational use, but the legalization of medical marijuana in New York, and what impact that has in the workplace. So, since January 2016 New York’s Compassionate Care Act has been in place, and what that does is, it allows certified patients, under the law, to utilize legally medical marijuana. How does that impact the workplace? A certified patient is someone, an individual, who has a disability under the New York State Human Rights Law. So as a result, that is a protected class, which employers need to pay attention to, particularly those employers who drug test, because an employee may test positive, but yet if they’re certified, and it’s through the use of medical marijuana, employers cannot take an adverse action necessarily as a result of that positive drug test. Please keep that in mind, and we’ll wait to see the impact on the workplace if recreational marijuana ever becomes legal in New York State. Thank you. Andrew Singer, Tannenbaum Helpern Syracuse & Hirschtritt.