Where You At?

Oh, yes, I’ve been tracking you.  Me and Dick Cheney.  Just click on the map and it’ll take you to Google Maps, where you can see the location of every caller to The Russ Belville Show from November through today.

I’ve only located the city; I have no idea your exact address.  Plus, since I get a lot of calls from Chicago, there are lots of spread-out pins there.

Finally, if you call more than once I pin you more than once.  You can uncheck the shows day by day to get a better idea of the coverage.

Hi, North America!

Retroactive Immunity for Telcos passed by senate

The Senate voted this week to approve the FISA reforms that would give retroactive immunity to the telephone companies that assisted Bush in illegally spying on you without a warrant.

Note that’s not “believed to have assisted”.  Bush admitted that they DID assist.  Plus, a former IT worker at AT&T revealed that AT&T had him install circuit taps in “Room 641A” at their location in San Francisco that copied EVERY SINGLE THING you ever surfed, phoned, emailed, blogged, purchased, read, donated, chatted, bid on, and downloaded through those circuits.

This wasn’t the NSA trying to protect Americans by only spying on the wretched al Qaeda, or only on international calls to the Middle East or Europe or Asia.  This is copying every single thing we Americans are doing electronically.  This is as close as technology can get to reading your mind and tracking your every thought and movement.

The fact that this can get through the Senate is appalling, especially with a Democratic majority.  Too many (allegedly) Democratic senators sided with Bush, who says that he won’t pass any FISA reform that doesn’t include immunity, and that if we don’t pass FISA reform, American lives are in danger.  You got that?  If the telephone companies aren’t protected, Bush is willing to let Americans die.

And it’s not as if these companies didn’t know what they were doing wasn’t illegal.  They have huge staffs of highly trained lawyers.  Apparently Qwest’s staff was knowledgeable enough on the issue that they refused to go along (and, coincidentally enough, after refusing to spy on us, some of their directors were suddenly investigated by the feds for unrelated matters.)

And it’s not as if these companies were “doing their patriotic duty” as Bush would have you believe, because when Bush didn’t pay the bill, the phone companies cut the taps.  They were doing their fiduciary duty, not patriotic duty.

Now this goes to the House, which has rejected threats from Bush that if FISA wasn’t passed and expired on Saturday, the terrorists win.  The House was willing to extend FISA for three more weeks to hammer things out with Bush, but he wouldn’t accept that.  You got that?  If telephone companies aren’t protected, Bush won’t even let the current law continue; he’d rather that Americans die than negotiate with the House.

You know, in the past we knew that most politicians were bought and paid for by big business, but never before have we had an administration so nakedly fascist in its thinking.  And it’s not even about protecting AT&T and Verizon from big-money lawsuits – they might be able to make a case for what they did and even if they lost, it’s not like any damages would sink their companies.

It’s all about keeping the lid on the malfeasance of the Bushies.  It’s the run out the clock game.  I sure hope that the Obama Administration doesn’t pull a Gerald Ford and decide we need to let bygones be bygones and heal the nation by not prosecuting these treasonous bastards who’ve destroyed our reputation and shat upon our Constitution.

Barack Obama – Ageist?

I admit I was a bit confused by one of my callers today who said he was for Barack Obama, until he came off like a “punk kid” and made some remark about Hillary Clinton that he found to be “ageist”.

Hmm.  I hadn’t considered and ageism angle.  Hillary’s what, 60?, and Barack is 48, I think.  Is twelve years enough to consider “ageist”?

Just how much does age play into this Democratic race?  I rail against the same menu for us forty-and-younger voters: a Bush or a Clinton on the menu for all our voting lives.  But there’s also a point that Hillary represents the older DLC Democrats, the establishment, the Baby Boomers.  Many of us younger voters (can I still call myself younger at 40?) are disappointed in what the Baby Boomers have left us (though I 48 puts Barack on the tail end of the Baby Boom… he just doesn’t seem like a Boomer.)

I’ve already gotten two emails from sixty-ish listeners who very much disagreed with my caller.  Anyone want to clue me in on the opposing view?  Because I don’t get how anyone could consider Obama to have behaved with “ageism”.

Neo-Con Double-Speak

Ellis Weiner in Huffington Post does an exemplary job decoding the latest column by Bill Kristol in the NY Times.  Remember these words anytime you hear a neo-con taking about “the welfare state”:

When billionaires get tax breaks, they receive “incentives.” When working class families get food stamps, they’re the perpetrators (and the victims, really) of “the welfare state.” When government serves corporations, it’s “a partnership.” When government serves individuals, it’s “socialism.” When William Kristol rides his father’s contacts and reputation to a sinecure insulated from any commercial or marketplace consequences — and suffers not an ounce of setback for having been wrong about everything — he’s showing “self-reliance.” When you ask that the FTC at least protect your children from poison in Chinese toys, you’re encouraging “the nanny state.” Clear?

What’s up with the re-run?

If you tuned in this weekend and thought, gee, that sounds exactly like stuff “Radical” Russ said before, well, you’re right.  I was all ready to go with lots of great stories and audio when, at the last moment, we had to air a repeat show.

Believe me, I didn’t want to run a repeat.  There was a corroded cable leading from my studio to the satellite uplink — our recent wet cold weather proved to be the breaking point.  Every time I would try to connect up with Steve back in Washington, DC, the line would drop after a couple of minutes.  I was very disappointed – this was a really jam-packed week to cover.

It has been repaired now and I’ll be back on the air next weekend. — “R”R

P.S.  18-1!  Ha ha ha!  Tom Brady doesn’t get to join Bradshaw and Montana!  The ‘72 Dolphins are safe!  My Packers lost to the Super Bowl champs.  Maybe I can suffer through two Mannings winning a Super Bowl in a row… and all the commercials that are bound to appear featuring both of them.

The Ends Justify The Means

Remember the Constitution?  Not the ship, but the “damned piece of paper”?  Remember that part in the Eighth Amendment…

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

That used to mean that we would never torture our disappeared POWs in prison camps (excuse me, I meant “employ enhanced interrogation techniques against the unlawful enemy combatants we hold indefinitely without habeas corpus in our overseas detention facilities.”  No, screw that, I meant “torture our disappeared POWs in prison camps,” dammit!)

For decades now, one of the judicial tests as to whether some treatment was “cruel and unusual” was to determine if that behavior “shocks the conscience”.  That’s a scary enough thought when you have a remorseless administration with no conscience, but at least it’s a standard.

Well, in testimony today before Joe Biden and the Senate Judiciary Committee, our Attorney General Mike Mukasey, the man who couldn’t say for sure whether or not the drowning torture from the Spanish Inquisition, a practice used by Japanese in WWII for which we convicted them of war crimes, you know, “waterboarding”, is actually torture… remember him… Mike Mukasey under questioning from Senator Biden, claims a new prerogative for the use of torture against our enemies.  That rumbling sound you hear is the Founding Fathers rolling over in their graves.  For today, Mukasey invoked the “Ends Justify The Means” defense for torture:

   Biden: You talk about waterboarding in relative terms. For example — am I getting it right? If waterboarding… if a person in the government, CIA, or any government agency engaged in waterboarding of a captured prisoner, and the purpose of it was because they believed that prisoner knew where there was a nuclear weapon hidden, about to be detonated in the city of Washington, then that might be OK. But if they just waterboarded him just to find out whether or not they — where they purchased their airline ticket, that might not be OK. That’s what it seems like you’re saying.

   Mukasey: With respect, I don’t think that’s what I’m saying. I don’t I’m saying it is simply a relative issue. There is a statute under which it is a relative issue. I think the Detainee Treatment Act engages the standard under the Constitution, which is a “shocks the conscience” standard, which is essentially a balancing test of the value of doing something as against the cost of doing it, um, and…

   Biden: When you say, “against the cost of doing it,” do you mean the cost that might occur in human life if you fail to do it? Do you mean the cost in terms of…

   Mukasey: No.

   Biden: …our sensibilities and what we think is appropriate and inappropriate behavior in a civilized society?

   Mukasey: I chose the…

   Biden: What do you mean?

   Mukasey: I chose the wrong word. I meant the heinousness of doing it, the cruelty of doing it, balanced against the value.

   Biden: Balanced against what value?

   Mukasey: The value of what information you might get, and…

   Biden: That’s what I though you said.

   Mukasey: …in one of your hypotheticals, there was getting some historical information or some other information that couldn’t be used to save lives. And one wouldn’t have to get to the question of whether that was torture or not to find that it would shock the conscience to do it in those circumstances.

   Biden: Well, I do understand it, then. So, the shocking of the conscience is, again, where the relevance comes in. If the purpose of the waterboarding was to save humanity from 20 nuclear weapons going off, that’s one thing. If the purpose of the waterboarding was to find out who the commanding officer of that individual was, that’s another thing.

   I’ve never heard the statute–I’ve never heard torture referenced in those terms.

   Mukasey: That’s not…

   Biden: I’ve never…

   Mukasey: That’s not in the torture statute.

   Biden: Well, I’ve never heard any discussion of shocking the conscience in those ways. I didn’t think shocking the conscience had any relationship to the end being sought. I thought shocking the conscience had to do with what we consider to be basic societal values. Things that we held dear. What we considered to be civilized behavior. You’re the first person that I’ve ever heard say what you just said. Now, I’d be delighted — and I don’t want to pursue this, unless you do — I’d be delighted to have your staff in the Justice Department give me anyone else who in the past has referenced the discussion of shocking the conscience in the context you just referenced. I find it to be fairly unique. As a matter of fact, it shocks my conscience….

   But the truth of the matter is, I just never heard the issue of torture discussed in — or what constitutes torture, which is defined by shocking the conscience — in terms of the relative benefit that might be gained from engaging a technique. I find that–none of the Aristotelian logic I was trained by even got me there. I don’t understand that premise.

In other words, torture is bad, unless you’re doing it to bad people.  In that case, if torturing the bad guy saves many lives, it ain’t torture.

The Ends Justify The Means.  We’ve all known this is standard neo-con operating procedure for over a decade.  Lying a country into unnecessary war is bad, unless the ends justify doing so.  Disenfranchising poor and black people in presidential elections is bad, unless the ends justify doing so.  Torturing people is bad, unless the ends justify doing so.  It’s just shocking to see it writ large like this and to hear hardly a peep from the public about it.

Ironically, this is coming from the same set of people who keep telling me I’m a “moral relativist”.

Rally for Domestic Partnerships in Portland, OR

All liberty-loving radicals within driving distance of Portland, Oregon:  Today there will be a rally at 5:30pm at Terry Shrunk Plaza, SW 3rd and Madison, in support of Basic Rights Oregon.  We’re rallying against the federal court delay in enacting Oregon’s domestic partnership law, which was to take effect this January 1 until out-of-state anti-gay activists filed suit to put a temporary restraining order on implementing the law.

See BasicFairness.com and BasicRights.org for more information.  A detailed timeline of the issues follows in There’s Moreville…
From Basic Rights Oregon:

Winter and Spring 2007: Oregon Equality Act and Family Fairness Act Passed

Last spring, in an effort led by Basic Rights Oregon, the 2007 legislature courageously passed two pieces of landmark equality legislation: the Oregon Equality Act, which created a statewide law banning discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and the Oregon Family Fairness Act, which gives committed couples in domestic partnerships the legal recognition they need to take care of one another – especially in a crisis.

Summer and Fall 2007: Opponents Try, and Fail, to Overturn the Laws by Referendum

But “Restore America,” a far-right group based in Tennessee, doesn’t like Oregon’s fairness laws. They launched a signature gathering effort to force a referendum on both laws. They needed to gather only about 55 thousand valid signatures for a referendum – literally tens of thousands fewer than needed for a regular ballot measure.

Basic Rights Oregon met them at every turn – exposing their illegal tactics and gathering support for equality.

And our opponents failed. On September 26, anti-gay groups turned in their signatures. The Oregon Elections Division then followed their well-established procedures for determining how many of these signatures were valid. Following these procedures, which have been in place for decades, elections officials determined that the referendum effort fell short of the required number of signatures.

December, 2007: Opponents File Lawsuit to Revive Failed Referendum

But on December 3, lawyers for another out-of-state group, Arizona’s Alliance Defense Fund, filed suit to force the Secretary of State to change its policies and procedures to make a special exception for Restore America’s referendum by retroactively admitting signatures that had been disqualified.

“Basically, we have an out-of-state group that doesn’t like the outcome of a fair and well established process in Oregon – and so it wants a special exception to be made for its failed campaign,” said Basic Rights Oregon Executive Director Jeana Frazzini.

Even though we were not a named party in the complaint, Lemons v. Bradbury, Basic Rights Oregon hired the top elections attorney in Oregon to find a way to influence the case.

For weeks the courts took no action on the lawsuit, and it looked like domestic partnerships would almost certainly move forward on January 2nd.

But on Thursday, December 21, the out of state lawyers filed an eleventh hour motion for a “temporary restraining order (TRO)” that would delay the implementation of the domestic partnership law. Basic Rights Oregon leapt into action a “friend of the court” brief that detailed the irreparable harms that would befall committed couples if the law were delayed.

December 28: The Hearing

The plaintiffs based their request for an injunction on several things. First, they argued that those anti-gay activists whose signatures had been disqualified from referendum petitions had been denied a “fundamental right” – similar to the fundamental right to have one’s vote counted. Next, they argued that the plaintiffs would be “irreparably harmed” should the domestic partnership law go into effect before their case had been heard and resolved. They asked that the law be delayed from going into effect.

As Amy J. Ruiz reported for the Portland Mercury:

Going into the hearing, Judge Michael Mosman laid out his preliminary thoughts – and they sounded really good for the state and Basic Rights Oregon, who’d joined the case as a friend of the court.

He said the first part, the merits of the case,largely came down to the plaintiffs showing that the act of signing a referendum petition is a “fundamental right,” akin to voting being a “fundamental right.” [H]e added that in the briefs, and in the case law he’d researched, he didn’t see a precedent for equating signing an initiative or referendum petition with voting. “I’m tentatively inclined not to find a fundamental right here where none has been found before,” he said.

But, the plaintiffs had a secret weapon up their sleeve: A Ninth Circuit case out of Idaho that did equate petition signing with voting (that case was about geographic disenfranchisement, not the disqualification of signatures based on the state’s established criteria, Oregon Deputy Attorney General Katherine Georges argued, to no avail).

So, while our legal advisers believe Judge Mosman clearly misapplied this Ninth Circuit case from Idaho, the judge was convinced by the argument that having your signature on a petition counted might be a fundamental right – like having your vote counted.

Which brought the Judge to the question of whether letting the law go into effect would bring “irreparable harm” to the anti-gay plaintiffs.

This is where BRO’s amicus brief was critical. In it, we argued that the plaintiffs are not harmed. Further, any minimal harm the plaintiffs claim by the implementation of the law is far outweighed by the harm that would be caused to thousands of Oregonians by delaying domestic partnerships. We explained: “The rights afforded by domestic partnerships are not hypothetical. They have a real and immediate impact on Oregon citizens.”

Our brief then gave a detailed account of the real harms that were addressed by domestic partnerships, including the right to have one’s partner make health care decisions, the right to be presumed the legal parent of your partner’s child – without having to adopt, and the lack of inheritance rights and other financial harms. We offered many personal accounts of Oregonians who have experienced each of these harms – all of whom are relying on domestic partnerships to protect their families.

However, Judge Mosman seemed to buy the argument that “by putting off domestic partnerships for a short period of time, the harm in the Basic Rights Oregon brief is greatly mitigated.”

We think not!!! As BRO’s Executive Director Jeana Frazzini has pointed out, many real couples will give birth in January. Real couples have medical procedures scheduled. And the delay of domestic partnerships hurts these couples and their families in ways that can never be repaired.

But the Judge was swayed. And caring, committed couples will now have to wait another month for their domestic partnerships and critical family rights and protections.

What BRO is Doing About It

On Wednesday, January 2, attorneys for Basic Rights Oregon filed a motion to intervene in the Lemons v. Bradbury lawsuit. The next morning, we learned the the judge had granted our motion. Basic Rights Oregon will now have standing in the case, enabling us to ensure that the voices of hundreds of families and committed couples are heard before the court.

Basic Rights Oregon will take every available legal action and be aggressively involved in righting this wrong. Make no mistake – BRO will continue to be there every s
tep of the way until same-sex couples have the rights and protections of domestic partnerships.

What YOU Can Do About It

Plenty. First, make a contribution today to BRO’s legal fund. 100% of your money will be used to engage in this lawsuit from every available angle. We need the resources to mount the best legal strategy possible to reverse this situation. You can make a difference now by joining this aggressive and urgent legal effort to get our domestic partnership law back on track.

Next, channel your frustration, your anger, and your outrage into positive action with other members of the community. Come to the Rally to Defend Equality in Portland on January 30!

Busy busy busy

Sorry for the lack of posts… it’s my birthday week, we’re still moving in, I’ve got a full-time job, plus a consulting gig, plus tomorrow I’m auditioning to host a national political podcast (and get paid for it!), so I’m really up to my neck in Stuff To Do.

In the meantime, John Edwards has dropped out of the race, leaving the Hillary – Obama slugfest to continue unabated.  Given those two choices, you know I have to go with Obama… but I fear we’ll have the inevitable Clinton nominee.  Vote for a Clinton or vote against a Bush… that’s been my electoral choice my entire life, as my first presidential election of voting age was 1988.  Also consider that most of Reagan’s terms featured a Bush VP (who was probably pulling more strings than the doddering Alzheimer’s-ridden former star of Death Valley Days most of the time):

1980:  (Reagan / BUSH)
1984:  (Reagan / BUSH)
1988:  BUSH v. Dukakis
1992:  CLINTON v. Bush v. Perot
1996:  CLINTON v. Dole
2000:  BUSH v. Gore
2004:  BUSH v. Kerry
2008:  CLINTON? v. McCain?

Twenty-eight years of a Bush or a Clinton on the ticket.  Gee, could we get a more diverse menu down here?  Something other than “fascist” and “Republican Lite”?

Block Telecom Immunity!

On Monday there will be a cloture vote on the Senate floor to move forward with the FISA reform bill that would give retroactive immunity to the phone companies (and, by extension, the president) for breaking the law and spying on you without a warrant.

The following Democratic senators need to hear from you!  Tell them to support Senator Dodd’s efforts to fight a no-questions-asked, get-out-of-jail-free card for spying on Americans.  Tell them if they want your vote, they need to stand up for the Constitution and the rule of law:

	  phone 	   fax
Akaka	 (202) 224-6361   (202) 224-2126
Biden	 (202) 224-5042   (202) 224-0139
Boxer	 (202) 224-3553   (415) 956-6701
Brown	 (202) 224-2315   (202) 228-6321
Cardin	 (202) 224-4524   (202) 224-1651
Clinton  (202) 224-4451   (202) 228-0282
Harkin	 (202) 224-3254   (202) 224-9369
Kennedy  (202) 224-4543   (202) 224-2417
Menendez (202) 224-4744   (202) 228-2197
Obama	 (202) 224-2854   (202) 228-4260
Sanders  (202) 224-5141   (202) 228-0776
Webb	 (202) 224-4024   (202) 228-6363

P.S. Mad props to my own Senator Wyden for continuing to stand up against this dictatorial abuse of power.

Testimony on workplace medical marijuana discrimination

Today in my capacity as the Associate Director of Oregon NORML, I testified before the Oregon House’s Committee on Business & Labor.  At issue is “emergency” legislation requested by the contracting industries to give employers the right to not accommodate medical marijuana patients in safety-sensitive positions, regardless of where or when a patient uses their medicine.  Since the test for “impairment” is a urine screen, this creates a discriminatory precedent, as no medical marijuana patient can pass a urine screen.  Marijuana metabolites stay detectable in the body long after any impairment has faded.

In essence, it would force many of Oregon’s 15,000+ medical marijuana patients to choose between employment or health care.

Below the break is my written testimony to the representatives on the committee.
Good morning, my name is Russ Belville.  I am the Associate Director of Oregon NORML, a political talk radio host, a medical marijuana caregiver, and an advocate for personal privacy and civil rights.

I find it ironic that on the day following our national celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., our presence is required here to debate what Dr. King, in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail would call an “unjust law” – a “a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself.”

Today we address an alleged emergency – the issue of employer accommodation of medical marijuana patients in the workplace.  The tactics are familiar: scare the public with visions of the demonized minority wreaking societal harm.  In times past (and, unfortunately, times present) it was the racial minority to be loathed and feared; today it is the person whose doctor recommends a plant over a pharmaceutical for treating debilitating illness or injury.  In times past, the racial minority was dehumanized with unspeakable epithets; today the medical marijuana patient is dehumanized with slurs of “pothead” and “stoner”.  Have no doubt; what we are debating here is nothing short of institutionalized discrimination against a minority group, as pernicious as the unjust laws that redlined neighborhoods into ghettoes and the unjust laws that placed “No Irish Need Apply” signs on storefront windows.

I believe some of the proponents of this language have the best of intentions and do not intend to be intolerant and discriminatory.  They truly worry about safety at the workplace, as do all of us who are employed, medical marijuana patients included.  No patient should ever be under the influence of marijuana while working in a safety-sensitive position, but neither should any worker be under the influence of painkillers, anti-depressants, or cough syrup.  Yet we’re not here to discuss an employer’s refusal to accommodate those medicines in the workplace, only marijuana.  There seems to be no emergency concerning workers’ use of Vicodin, Zoloft, or Robitussin in safety-sensitive positions, only marijuana.  Indeed, we are discussing the proposal of an unjust law, or as Dr. King called it, “difference made legal.”

If such an emergency truly exists, you would think proponents of the language could point to a massive increase in workplace accidents.  In May of 2000, there were 600 registered medical marijuana patients.  By September of 2005, there were over 11,000.¹   Yet in 2000 there were 55 workplace fatalities reported to Oregon OSHA.  In 2005, the number had dropped to 47.²   When the program started in 1998, Oregon workers suffered work-related injuries and illnesses at a rate of 6.9 for every 100 full-time employees.  By 2006, that rate had dropped to 5.3 for every 100 full-time employees.³    Where proponents seem to think medical marijuana patients in the workplace are creating a safety emergency, the data show that Oregon’s workplaces have become safer since the passage of the medical marijuana law.  Nobody would argue those facts are correlated – medical marijuana hasn’t made workplaces safer – but certainly medical marijuana hasn’t made workplaces more dangerous, either.

Proponents of this language cannot point to one single case where a serious workplace safety issue was instigated by a medical marijuana patient’s responsible use of medicine off the job site after hours.  But can we afford to wait for that one hypothetical irresponsible patient to drive a school bus off a bridge or run over someone with the forklift before we address medical marijuana impairment?  Of course not, no more than we would wait for the first fatalities before stopping drivers made drowsy by sleep aids or sawmill employees made groggy by painkillers.

That’s why the solution to this imaginary emergency is more ludicrous than the hypothetical problem it’s proclaimed to solve.  Testing urine for alcohol or most drugs makes sense because a certain reading will indicate physical and mental impairment.  However, marijuana metabolites will remain detectable in a person’s urine for up to thirty days following the use of medical marijuana, long after any physical or mental effects have waned, according to Paul L. Cary of the University of Missouri’s Toxicology and Drug Monitoring Laboratory, who authored A Critical Review of Relevant Research and Cannabinoid Detection Guidance for Drug Courts.⁴   Thus a positive test of a medical marijuana patient’s urine for the presence of marijuana metabolites does not indicate workplace impairment at all; merely the fact that one legally uses medical marijuana.  Even the U.S. Department of Transportation states that urine testing “cannot be used by itself to prove behavioral impairment.”⁵

But to the proponents of this language, the lack of proof of impairment is irrelevant.  They are willing to hang the “No Medical Marijuana Patients Need Apply” sign in the storefront.  They believe that medical marijuana patients should be on SSI or disability and not be working, productive members of society.  With close to 18,000 patients currently registered on the program, is the State of Oregon ready to shoulder the burden of all these patients shifting to the public rolls?  Are we ready for 18,000 of our most vulnerable citizens to be potentially unemployed and homeless?

We are all concerned about workplace safety.  But to prevent workplace accidents, we need to be testing for impairment, rather than a suspected cause of impairment.  A person hit by the hypothetical impaired fork-lift driver is just as injured whether the driver was abusing his medication, drowsy from too little sleep, or hung-over from drinking the night before.

Fortunately, such testing exists.  Modern computerized impairment testing can accurately detect workplace impairment due to a variety of factors, including drug and alcohol use, sleep deprivation, injury and fatigue.⁶   This kind of testing has been studied by researchers at Johns Hopkins University and the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.  These tests would put medical marijuana patients on equal footing with the users of other medications in the workplace to prove their fitness for work by demonstrating lack of impairment, not lack of marijuana metabolites.  Additionally, these tests have added benefits for employers: among companies that used computerized impairment testing and urine testing, 82% found impairment tests improved safety and both employees and employers preferred the impairment tests to urine tests.⁷

Surely, if the proponents of this discriminatory language were concerned with workplace impairment, they wouldn’t choose urine testing that doesn’t prove marijuana impairment and they wouldn’t threaten the jobs of 18,000 unimpaired workers who have medical marijuana cards.  The data show t
here is no increase in workplace accidents or fatalities since the advent of medical marijuana… so what is the emergency, then?

The only emergency that exists when medical marijuana patients are allowed in the workplace is the threat they pose to the Drug Free Workplace urine testing regimen employers impose on workers who aren’t medical marijuana patients.  If a medical marijuana patient is allowed in the workplace, all the other workers will discover their patient co-worker to be safe, efficient, and productive.  How, then, will the employer justify testing the urine of other workers for marijuana, under the guise of protecting workplace safety, when everyone knows the working medical marijuana patient is no safety threat or productivity drain?

Others may question the role of the campaign contributions from the drug testing industry, the drug rehab facilities, and the construction and general contracting industries, in bringing this language to bear during an emergency, off-year, legislative session.  I like to believe that our distinguished legislators are more beholden to the scientific facts and protecting the livelihood of their most vulnerable constituents, and can’t be bought by the thousands of dollars the wealthy proponents of this discriminatory language have donated to their campaign coffers.

Oregon’s medical marijuana law says that marijuana should be treated like other medicines.⁸   Oregon’s law also reflects the will of the people that disabled Oregonians should be given the fullest accommodation to participate in society and that discrimination in the workplace against a person using a legal drug under a doctor’s supervision is not tolerated.⁹   To enact this language would effectively deny employment to 18,000 Oregonians, contrary to letter and spirit of Oregon law.  This is singling out one medicine and its users for legalized discrimination.  Test for workplace impairment; don’t test for medical marijuana cards.  Treat marijuana like other medicines.  This is “sameness made equal”, as Dr. King wrote from Birmingham forty-five years ago.  Let our laws be just laws.

---

¹ Oregon DHS; OMMP Statistics and presentation of Dr. Grant Higginson to Oregon Medical Cannabis Awards 2007, December 15, 2007.
 ² Oregon OSHA; Oregon Workplace Fatality Reports and Statistics
 ³ Oregon Department of Consumer and Business Services; Occupational Injury and Illness Reports
 ⁴ THE MARIJUANA DETECTION WINDOW:  DETERMINING THE LENGTH OF TIME CANNABINOIDS WILL REMAIN DETECTABLE IN URINE FOLLOWING SMOKING  - A Critical Review of Relevant Research and Cannabinoid Detection Guidance for Drug Courts By Paul L. Cary, M.S. , Toxicology and Drug Monitoring Laboratory, University of Missouri.
 ⁵ National Highway Traffic Safety Administration; Drugs and Human Performance Fact Sheets.
 ⁶ Overview of FIT 2500’s scientific research, PMI Incorporated
 ⁷ Impairment Testing: Does it Work?, National Workrights Institute
 ⁸ ORS 475.300-346
 ⁹ ORS 659A.103