Drugs

Can you be tested? Fired? NY offers guidance on marijuana and work – newyorkupstate.com

Can you be tested? Fired? NY offers guidance on marijuana and work – newyorkupstate.com

With recreational marijuana now legal in New York, employers and workers are confronting a host of thorny questions about the drug and the workplace.

Can you be fired if you smoke on the job? What if you use at home? Can you be tested? The state Labor Department has some new guidance out that attempts to answer some of those questions.

50-year war on drugs imprisoned millions of Black Americans

50-year war on drugs imprisoned millions of Black Americans

Fifty years ago this summer, President Richard Nixon declared a war on drugs. Today, with the U.S. mired in a deadly opioid epidemic that did not abate during the coronavirus pandemic’s worst days, it is questionable whether anyone won the war.

Yet the loser is clear: Black and Latino Americans, their families and their communities. A key weapon was the imposition of mandatory minimums in prison sentencing. Decades later those harsh federal and state penalties led to an increase in the prison industrial complex that saw millions of people, primarily of color, locked up and shut out of the American dream

The Wind Cries Mary

The Wind Cries Mary this summer

I think it’s wonderful that they have legalized marijuana. While I don’t smoke, I really don’tmind occasionally smelling it in the woods and on the air in the parks. If people want to smoke in the park, then all the more power to them.