Since the legalization of cannabis in Canada, there are still many doubts about the impact of this substance on workplaces
The Conference Board of Canada and The Globe and Mail are getting together to study the relationship the development of our jobs and cannabis use. Employers and employees (both recreational and medical cannabis users, as well as non-cannabis users) are invited to take part in this survey. The obtained data will be used to create a report that will be shown in Oct. 15, 2019 at a conference at The Globe and Mail Centre in Toronto.
The legalization of recreational cannabis in Canada has brought some unknowns for the employers and employees at the workplaces. Will more employees go to work under the influence of the substance? Employers don’t have enough knowledge to say whether recreational marijuana will have a negative or positive impact on their employee productivity.
It seems there will be shortage of recreational cannabis in Canada until 2022. The supply is lower than the demand in Canada.
Before the Cannabis Law came into effect, employers had to decide what they were going to do to prepare for this new legal recreational marijuana era and the level of risk that this could entail. This meant the updating of the use of substances and smoke-free policies. Employers had to find trained managers to detect and deal with the deficiencies induced by the use of substances and prepare employees so that they could never be affected during working hours.
The Cannabis Act has brought more attention than the mere legalization of recreational cannabis. It has had a lot of influence and created more resources to medical cannabis. The employees need authorization from a medical doctor to consume cannabis at the workplace. . Many employers are considering the pros and cons of this. In case the use of medical marijuana helps the employees to work better, the employers will consider the possibility to add the use of medical cannabis to benefits plans.
But the benefits of using cannabis in the workplace are not yet clear. In the future we will see more research and rules that will show what employers and employees think about medicinal and recreational cannabis. There may be some legal challenges about when an employer can do a test to detect marijuana use and about what employees can do during breaks at work.
Meanwhile, it remains unknown if recreational and medical marijuana use can negatively impact in the productivity.
