Questions as pot comes to work
wsj.com
wsj.com
Drugs in the work place aren't new. No company that I know of has a coffein limit though, even thought it is also a drug.
Medical marijuana should be treated like any other medication.
Recreational marijuana should be treated just like any other legal drug aka alcohol or sugar that employees consume.
If you can't do those things and perform your job safely and effectively, then disallow it. Contextually, some cultures (even by region in the US) respond differently to having a drink at lunch. Your business probably knows which clients will respond negatively and which will not be phased. The same logic applies with weed.
That something is 'lawful or not' is only part of the context in which we evaluate what is appropriate or not in social culture.
The 'can do your business effectively' not the issue, because it's obvious. Most people can do a glass of wine at lunch and that's that, some can't, but it's part of the meal time ritual and deeply embedded in our social culture. There's thousands of years behind that one. Weed, not so much. Even Hookah, where people sit around smoking a common pipe, doesn't do much to you.
Sugar is not considered a "legal drug" in western society, basically neither is caffeine...as for alcohol, kein Bier vor vier
Your response made me wonder if sugar is considered a "legal drug" anywhere in the world. A Google search came back as negative or at least inconclusive.
The topic is the subject of scientific study [1] - "intermittent access to sugar can lead to behavior and neurochemical changes that resemble the effects of a substance of abuse".
Then why does the FDA ban buying bulk caffeine [0]?
It seems like folks are also campaigning to ban kratom.
Basically even substances previously considered legal are under threat of being illegal. Remember even amphetamines used to be trivial to acquire.
0: https://www.newsweek.com/fda-bans-pure-bulk-caffeine-product...
As far as during work, the few places that could allow/tolerate use are the ones that don't care enough to have a policy anyway.
At work social events I can see attitudes shifting in some circles such that it might be acceptable to consume although there are some practicalities that make it difficult since there are rules about smoking/vaping indoors.
Additionally just as sharing beverages is uncommon at a work-social event, sharing a cannabis product like you would with close/casual friends is going to be a barrier. Everyone smoking their own joint/pipe is also less probable because the level of intoxication is quite high per joint/bowl/etc.
Other cannabis products such as edibles may be a possibility but there long duration and onset also makes them less practical plus you have to consider that eating an edible is such a non-event that it is hardly comparable to having a beer with coworkers over a long meal and/or discussion.
The extent I see cannabis being accepted at most work social functions is a BYO policy at outdoor/mixed settings.
However, I could see cannabis becoming more accepted at work (social)retreats which are typically outside, last at least a day or longer, and focus more on bonding and relaxing.
*I consider alcohol a drug.
It's not that different from alcohol really, though definitely more healthy and less socially destructive.
But we have a messed up relationship with all drugs, it's all mixed up with religious bullshit and shame.
Is it ever okay to get high with a client? Duh of course it is. In the same way it is sometimes okay to drink with a client. Or share a meal with a client. Or go skydiving with a client. Context is everything. Why can't we just let people be people and not be so uptight about made-up rules?
I've always been cognizant of differing understandings around the drug, but I definitely think it still takes some discretion.
By the way, the key difference between a drink at lunch and some pot is that im pretty useful around 2p with a drink - stoned, I might as well go home for the day. (Of course, everyone's different).
So, I think this discussion is worth having in a respectful manner - it's new rules.
The actual key difference is the person, then, right? Because plenty of people I have encountered get tipsy or lose focus after one drink. And there are acquaintances that can smoke a bowl and still function well enough to perform their job.
Similarly, I can take a gummy and still work. A couple drinks and I'm useless.
And perhaps, for this reason, drugs shouldn't be a part of the workplace at all. Go visit Japan if you want to see what social pressure to drink after work does to a person's health.
I don't even want to consider what marijuana would do to an intelligent person's focus and clarity of thought, if subjected to social pressure to smoke after work.
Start with coffee. Coffee isn't dangerous from a fatal overdose perspective. It would take ~80+cups of coffee in a very short amount of time to reach life threatening caffeine levels. Something other than the caffeine would threaten your safety before the caffeine did. You can drink enough coffee to have a very unpleasant experience (I certainly have), but it's not a confusing substance, and most people know their limits (1-2 cups every few hours at most), and it's easy to stay within these limits. Different brews can definitely spike the coffee level, and I've had a few moments where I had just one (admittedly large) serving of a high caffeine grind and found myself more wired than I wanted to be.
Now, that said, if you eat three spoonfuls of caffeine powder rapidly, different story. That is quite rare in the caffeine world, though, and most people wouldn't consume the drug this way (it would in fact be rare, though caffeine pills might do it?).
Moving on to alcohol. It actually is quite dangerous from a fatal overdose perspective, mainly because many people enjoy (at least short term) getting quite drunk. It's generally easy to find alcohol in mild, easily understood doses, with some risks - "IPA" beers can surprise people who are accustomed to drinking pilsners. However, alcohol is regularly served and available in high concentrations that can be rapidly consumed before the effects set in. Coffee is easier to regulate, people don't generally enjoy getting too wired, and has an incredibly high fatal overdose threshold. Alcohol, on the other hand, is a substance that people usually consume like coffee (a couple pilsners, or glasses of wine), but there is a common use case where people deliberately drink a lot on purpose, and the delta between very drunk and fatal overdose on alcohol is much, much narrower than very wired and fatal dose on caffeine.
Now on to cannabis. Cannabis almost only exists in something similar to that highly volatile, powdered form of caffeine, and unlike whiskey vs pilsener, it is not apparent what you're consuming. Weed ranges from 1%THC to 35%+. If it is smoked, the effect at least comes on relatively quickly, but there's a long enough time lag that people can unintentionally take up to 100 times the dose they intended to. If you eat extracted THC, the risks amplify even more.
Another interesting thing about cannabis is that it appears that high doses, you get an unusual effect - the opposite of what people experience at low doses. For some people, if you drink a little caffeine, you get a little wired, if you drink too much, you get too wired. Same for getting drunk with alcohol - high doses have a similar effect, but to an undesirable magnitude. Weed, for some people has a different effect - take a little, get a little relaxed. But if you take too much, you don't get too relaxed, you experience the opposite, extreme anxiety and paranoia.
One saving grace of cannabis - unlike alcohol, the delta between being way, way too high and dying of an overdose is massive. In short, the danger of an unpleasant episode of cannabis is the unpleasant episode (well, there may be long term psychological effects).
My opinion is that cannabis should be legal, and that the practice of putting the potency on the label from a proper lab is a huge improvement over what we had before (some dude on Haight street reassuring you "nah, dude, this is the chillest, the chillest bud"). I also suspect that people who experienced heavy paranoia might not have been on the very low doses though thought they were (we're talking about 1.5-3% vs 30%+). Some people claim that CBD reduces the risk of anxiety, though others think that this is just a result of lower THC levels among high CBD stains.
Anyway, that was a very long passage of agreeing with you. It's hard to take a "small" dose of cannabis, it's hard to know to potency of what you're taking, you're "all in" before you find out, and the effect of large doses can be the opposite of small doses. There may be long term effects, certainly of excessive use at high doses, but the odds of a fatal overdoes, on the other hand, are vanishingly low.
I think weed affects people in wildly different ways. I know folks who can smoke all day and still be very social. As for myself, I generally need to remove myself from a social situation if I get too high, due to weird anxieties.
edit: I use the word paranoia here just because that's how I've interpreted my own experiences. I think "anxiety" is probably a more apt description.
Legality has changed around pot, so new politics have to be given to people to create a new consensus.