Amazon ends testing most employees for cannabis, will lobby for legalization

The fraud implications will keep me from ever buying any drug from Amazon.

Well I'm not even allowed to purchase beer or liquor on Amazon, even when Whole Foods sells beer/wine so- not for awhile?

More likely we’ll see Organic Fair Trade Sativa priced at three times normal at Whole Foods.

Then you get an ounce of plant matter sprayed with AB-PINACA from a third party seller

Buy Legal Weed at amazon.com

Weed is popular with middle/upper-middle class millennial techies, especially in liberal states like Amazon's home state of Washington. I doubt Amazon cares all that much about unskilled workers, they're hoping this will make them a more attractive home for tech talent.

> How is this benefiting Amazon?

Larger candidate pools is probably the biggest thing. But they might also realize that drug tests for weed aren't really that great because it stays in our bodies for so long compared to other drugs that could be used on a Friday night, and not show up in a drug test taken on the following Monday.

> Is it a competitive/recruiting move to have unskilled workers prefer working for Amazon over Walmart/Target?

Having people prefer to work at Amazon is a plus, this goes back to the larger candidate pool.

> Do they believe it will increase employee retention?

I can't speak on their behalf, but it could if an employee prefers to work for a company that does not drug test them for cannabis. If their other potential employers are drug testing for cannabis, it's an incentive for the employee to stay.

I think just trying to buy back public goodwill, since its all been pretty negative lately; drivers peeing in bottles, unionbusting, etc. By 'connecting' with the hip youth it'll save their reputation long term. And pot has strong support now, so they are really just jumping on the bandwagon at the last minute for looks

I assume they have to pay for the testing. Search suggest ~$30/test/person. Not sure how many tests per year, 4? With 1m+ workers that’s a decent sized budget line item.

IMHO large numbers of the unskilled workers working for Amazon aren't Amazon employees but rather from various contracting companies; so when Amazon talks about "employees" it's less about people in warehouses or delivery vans but more about people who build and maintain AWS.

In states where cannabis is legal, testing is going out the window. More then anything i would guess it is to stay competitive and to get rid of archaic policies this country appears to be moving away from. i think most US citizens now live without criminal marijuana laws.

Employees at my local Home Depot here in Washington, openly wear clothing that carries obvious cannabis related brands, imagery, and wording. I am seeing it more and more in other F500 type companies as well.

Oh, that's not him, you can't hold him and his legacy responsible for that.

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Not having numbers handy, I suspect the problem is that while polls do show widespread support generally, that doesn't hold true across demographics and districts. For example, older voters tend to vote Republican, and I can imagine that marijuana legalization isn't as popular among that group. If you were a Republican counting on support from that demographic, it would make sense to oppose it. Or maybe in your particular district it isn't a popular position, at least not popular enough to stick your neck out for it, especially when your opponents will likely hit you with a "soft on crime"/"moral corruption" attack if you try.

> So why hasn't it been legalized federally?

From my layman point of view, there is a lot involved with legalizing federally. Some of the obvious points that I can think of are:

1. Career politicians don't want to seem "soft on drugs or crime". This seems to be changing, but it's a slow roll.

2. Agency funding. The DEA gets a ton of money to enforce these federal laws. This has many layers to it and it seems much more complex than what I'm aware of, but I can imagine that all the people who currently get paid to enforce the ban on cannabis would be against this because there would likely be decreased funding to them (or at the very least, their roles would be changed).

3. Lobbying. Many people might want cannabis to be legal, but a lot of business do not because it could hurt their business. Big pharma has made a ton of money from prescription drugs that might possibly be replaced by a plant that people can grow on their own. These companies pay our representatives, and then representatives vote in their interests. One of the reasons cannabis was made illegal in the first place was because of a paper company that felt threatened by the use of industrial hemp.

4. In addition to the points related to money above (agency funding, lobbying), there are private prisons that make money from offenders of the current crimes in place. Police departments can get easy revenue from fines related to cannabis. Big pharma doesn't want legal alternatives to their drugs. Cartels also have an interest in keeping cannabis illegal. Alcohol companies may even be incentivized to keep it illegal so that alcohol remains the vice/drug of choice (this seems to be changing, major hard beverage companies have invested in cannabis companies).

These are some of (not all) the main reasons for why I think it's taking much longer than we would like.

republicans uniformly oppose it. in practice it's the issue on which their supposed libertarian ideology is the most transparently phony (if the deficit spending, anti-gay fervor, religious power grabs, opposition of voting rights, etc weren't clear enough anti-personal-freedom stances for you), they literally held complete and total political power in the US during the first couple years of Trump and didn't do shit, and they'll vote lockstep against it if democrats bring it up.

and on the flip side some democrats aren't great about it either, but it's far from the lockstep opposition on the republican side.

personally I think democrats are fairly likely to bring it up as an easy victory lap before the 2022 elections but it's highly likely that republicans will filibuster it anyway to prevent democrats from "getting an easy win" . and that's about the state of the things - republicans are just 100% against it and democrats are tepidly for it but don't really have the political control to break lockstep opposition, even if they were agreed within their own party. It's easier to work at a state level but obviously that leaves huge problems with federal enforcement and various legal logjams.

it's largely a problem of republicans, if there were only a few republicans willing to cross the aisle it could probably pass, but it's more important that democrats be denied political "wins" than to do what's good for their voters, and what their voters overwhelmingly want. Like I said, probably look for it to be brought up sometime in 2022, unless democrats lose their senate majority in the meantime in which case probably 5-10 more years (republicans ain't gonna do it, just like they didn't under trump).

would be the easiest possible "crossing the aisle" ever, if republicans were the least bit interested in good governance, but they're not.

I don't see why there would be any correlation between cannabis support and union support. What is interesting about Amazon's position?

In what way is it deviant?

I don't know where you live, but cannabis has been considered normal in many areas for a very long time.

Alcohol is normalized and regulated, doesn't stop teenagers from rebelling by getting drunk.

cannabis is already "normal".

i think rather people are cheering for freedom to choose to do or not do it, in the land of the free. you know that stuff we are always promised?

Just like with alcohol, if your recreational substances interfere with work performance, you're much likely to be laid off. I imagine this is especially true with Amazon and their notoriously tough work conditions.

Operating machinery under the influence of anything that inhibits your ability is a bad idea and potentially illegal regardless of the substance's legality.