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Comment by astura | Hacker News Reader

I'm sorry but "why does something being illegal prevent you from doing it?" is a ridiculous question.

Even if you start with the premise nobody is going to jail (which is blatantly untrue - I personally know people with possession charges), getting caught with small amounts of drugs can ruin the careers of some people, including my own career. Think people who must hold a professional licence, people who are subject to background checks (including coders who work at medium to large companies), people who work with children, people who work in certain safety critical industries, people who hold security clearances, etc. There was an FBI agent who was fired recently for testing positive for thc from using CBD oil, the federal government's position is there's no legitimate reason to test positive for thc.

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You're referring to your own risk tolerance that is unfounded in most modern workplaces. If you work in tech absolutely no employer does drug tests for employment. People talk about microdosing LSD openly.

Michael Pollen wrote a best selling book about his experience with psychedelics earlier this year. Tim Ferris funded a research institute at John Hopkins and talks about it on his podcast all the time.

Unless you work for the federal gov't you're catastrophizing the risk.

There is still some risk. I think you're forgetting that (1) illegal drugs are hard to obtainn--no walking into CVS--and (2) illegal drugs are not reliably sourced--I trust mass manufactured marijuana far more than I do from the sketchy guy on the corner.

That's not necessarily true, especially in consulting firms. I am drug tested somewhat regularly.

"If you work in tech"

You think there are no tech jobs in consulting firms?

What is tech? If you mean sv startups perhaps. But pretty much any embedded sw shop will at least test at hire on.

google, amazon, fb, netflix, apple...these are not "startups"

I don't know where you get this, maybe start-up land. I have been a dev since the early '90's and all kinds of enterprises do drug testing. Most utilities, health-related organizations, defense contractors, transportation businesses and even many large manufacturers routinely drug test potential employees. Most only test for pre-employment screening, but random testing is still used in many places.

Most recently, three years ago, I was tested for a contracting gig at a Wisconsin power company for a web dev job.

modern tech cos do not drug test

Sometimes I think startup land is a different planet, around here pretty much every company who would hire a software developer drug tests AND background checks unless maybe it's a really, really small company. Some even do the hair drug test instead of the piss test.

I've ALWAYS been drug tested before starting a software job. I've been drug tested working for the most benign of industries. I actually had a friend who quit weed so she could get a better paying job.

That sounds like a different planet to me. I don't know of any big tech company, let alone startups, that drug test. I wouldn't be surprised if this was the case for dev jobs in older industries but it doesn't seem to be the norm any more.

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