Amazon Supports Marijuana Legalization and Drops Weed Testing

A federal bill to legalize marijuana use got a powerful ally in Amazon. The Jeff Bezos-owned company announced its support for marijuana legalization. Alongside this, they are no longer screening potential employees for weed usage.

Amazon’s Weed Testing

The e-commerce giant’s CEO of Worldwide Consumer, Dave Clark, confirmed this news in their blog post. He said that the company’s public policy team now actively supports the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act of 2021 (MORE Act). In the proposed bill, cannabis will be legalized at the federal level and expunge criminal records.

Clark said that Amazon would drop their weed testing requirements for some jobs, specifically those that the Department of Transportation doesn’t regulate. In the blog post, Clark announced this as one of the two substantial changes in company policy. The other is their scaling down on their monitoring of their employees’ “Time off Task,” the company’s measure of ensuring worker productivity. 

Speculations

Amazon’s consumer boss also said that this endeavor aligns with the company’s vision to be Earth’s Best Employer and Earth’s Safest Place to Work. With a monthly average of 214.8 million website visitors from around the globe, the speculations are rife. It is, after all, listed on Forbes as the #2 workplace in the world in 2020.

Because of this, the update is seen as something of a big deal. Some see this as the company being hard up for employees. Although currently not selling marijuana, others think that this may be the company’s efforts at dominating the cannabis market. 

MORE In A Nutshell

Briefly, the MORE Act seeks marijuana legalization at the federal level by deleting the plant from the Controlled Substances Act (CSA). Doing so will allow businesses to get a wide variety of national services previously unavailable to them.

Marijuana Legalization

Many US states have already legalized marijuana use, including Amazon’s home state, Washington. Weed is legal in 16 states, while medical marijuana is legal in 36 states. Despite this, many employers predominantly refuse to work with the cannabis industry as it is still a classified substance. 

However, in nearly all 50 states, Amazon has a fulfillment center and is now building a headquarters in Virginia which is set to legalize weed on July 1. This is a leap that, according to Clark, is bigger than Amazon itself.

Changing Course

In the past, the e-commerce behemoth disqualified people from working for them if they tested positive for marijuana use. Clark added that they had changed their course due to state laws that are moving across the nation. However, the company will still do impairment checks and tests for drugs and alcohol after an incident.

Class Action Suit

All these may have something to do with a proposed class-action suit that Amazon was hit with in March of this year. It claimed that the company was violating a New York City law by testing job applicants for marijuana use at their local facilities. 

According to the Westlaw report, this is after receiving an accusation from the New York Attorney General’s office. It charged Amazon for its failure to take steps in protecting its workers at its warehouse in Staten Island in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Amazon has since denied the allegations. The company has filed its own lawsuit. They claimed that the state laws mentioned in the AG’s complaints were preempted by federal labor and workplace safety laws.

Moving On

Amazon is now hoping that the policymakers act swiftly and pass the legislation soon and that other employers follow their suit. The blog post written by Clark ended on a positive note. This positivity extends to a few weed companies that are publicly traded.

Pharmaceutical and cannabis companies such as Tilray have seen a rise of up to 5% on shares. The Chronos Group, likewise, had its stocks boosted up by as much as 3%. Sundial, a healthcare company, has seen an above 10% rise in its stock prices.