California governor vetoes medical marijuana workplace rights bill

Governor vetoes medical marijuana bill
SACRAMENTO — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has vetoed a bill sponsored by medical marijuana advocates that would have protected most employees from being fired for testing positive for pot that they used outside the workplace with their doctor’s approval.

The measure, AB2279 by Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, would have overturned a state Supreme Court ruling in January that allowed employers to punish workers for using medical marijuana that was legalized by a state ballot measure in 1996. Under Leno’s measure, the only workers who could have been fired for using medical marijuana would have been those in safety-related or law-enforcement jobs.

In its 5-2 ruling, the Supreme Court said the initiative, Proposition 215, exempted medical marijuana patients and their caregivers from state prosecution, but wasn’t intended to limit an employer’s authority to fire workers for violating federal drug laws.

Schwarzenegger used the same rationale in his veto message Tuesday.

“I am concerned with interference in employment decisions as they relate to marijuana use,” the governor wrote. “Employment protection was not a goal of the initiative as passed by voters in 1996.”

Medical marijuana supporters disagreed.

“The intent of 215 was to treat marijuana like other legal pharmaceutical drugs,” said Dale Gieringer, a co-author of the ballot measure and California coordinator of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

Leno said he wasn’t surprised by the veto in light of the state Chamber of Commerce’s opposition to his bill. He said the court majority, and the governor, apparently presumed that “the voters who supported Prop. 215 in 1996 intended that only those medical marijuana patients who are unemployed could make use of (the law).”

Apparently it’s OK with Governor Schwarzenegger to discriminate against sick and disabled people who use legal cannabis medicine recommended by their doctor.  You can have your health, or a job, but you must choose!

But if you’re a healthy guy hoisting 300 lbs of iron over your head, it’s OK for you to smoke a joint and say “pot’s not a drug; it’s a weed”, keep your bodybuilding job, go on to become the greatest ever in your sport, transition to an acting (?) career, become a superstar, and leverage your celebrity and an Enron-engineered energy catastrophe to recall Grey Davis and get yourself elected governor of the world’s fifth-largest economy.