Comment by idjrgisjet | Hacker News Reader

Comment by idjrgisjet | Hacker News Reader

I remember when I was in the Navy, running a nuclear power plant on a ship that carried nuclear weapons, and the Chief of the Boat regularly showed up to work so drunk he couldn't speak (having driven himself to work) and everyone ignored it and when juniors complained seniors threatened to fabricate charges against them to shut them up, and listening to that guy scream and yell about how anyone who smokes cannabis is a fucking loser, a total garbage piece of shit, not even a real human being, and genuinely having difficulty not laughing and/or screaming. What a fucking joke that place was.

Friends in the intelligence community have told me they have as many extreme, extreme alcoholics as the Navy does, and that's just fine, part of the "culture", but oh boy, cannabis is not acceptable. Not sure if it was always like that, or just recently because they have recruiting problems.

I also have friends at national labs watching this very enthusiastically, hoping it spills over to their sector, because they have difficulty recruiting PhDs who are willing to get randomly piss tested.

I can tell you right now if any job required a drug test, I wouldn't work there.

I use cannabis sometimes but it's more the principal of it.

It's a privacy violation and positive results don't actually mean you're intoxicated on the job. What people do in their free time is nobodies business so long as it's not harming other people.

> I can tell you right now if any job required a drug test, I wouldn't work there.

Airline pilots? People operating dangerous machinery?

Sure. Not jobs for me. I wouldn’t do it either out of principle. Someone else can.

So why is getting shitfaced the night before flying a plane or jumping in a 20 story crane okay but not smoking a joint?

Because cannabis can have effects up to a week after if I remember correctly. And it’s not very predictable. Alcohol is cleared out at a predictable rate and has no effect after a few hours, you’ll just be tired.

Marijuana’s effects last about one to three hours. A bit longer if ingested. There might technically be longer-term effects noticeable in a clinical setting, but nothing to a degree that would impact somebody’s ability to function at a typical level.

To my understanding "being tired" (which is absolutely part of being hungover the next day after a night of heavy drinking) is comparable and according to some sources pretty much equivalent to being "under the influence" in terms of how much it can impair you when operating heavy machinery.

I know a couple railroad engineers. They basically had to give up drinking because they could lose their job.

They do some kind of test that can pick up if you drank in the last couple days.

The way they assign shifts too causes the problems. If a shift pops up, they wanna take it, and that could happen at any time.

In any case I'd wager it's related to the hangover problem. You don't want a tired, distracted (by headaches or whatever), grumpy person moving 12000 tons.

You did NOT remember correctly. The only way you're going to have effects for a week is by using it for a week! The effects are VERY predictable, as studies have shown first-hand through trials for many decades. The only thing that isn't absolutely certain is an individual's rate of processing THC-COOH, which is only a leftover metabolite of what was once psychoactive THC (THC-A). You will absolutely test positive for THC-COOH a week after a single usage, sometimes up to a month; because it's stored in your fat. For this reason, it can even be detected up for multiple months in heavy users! An inactive metabolite is unable to cause any psychoactive effects.

That's the big difference. A breathalyzer tells if you're right now actively impaired. Cannabis tests simply show that sometime in the past 30 days you smoked. Doesnt show active impairment.

But the real reason why cannabis was so heavy handed criminalized was because it was a "black, hippie, and anarchist" drug. https://www.aclu.org/issues/smart-justice/war-marijuana-blac...

We might actually be turning that around, only after 90 years.

Mouth swabs are a more reasonably analog to breathalyzers for cannabis, although even with those the detection period can be up to 48-72 hours. But still, much better than the months long detection period for the more common urine tests.

My hope is once its legalized fully, more effort can be put into researching and designing more sensitive tests until we have something that is equally as capable as breathalyzers are(which is questionable in and of itself, but I'll settle for equal treatment under the law for now rather than aiming for perfection).

How would you know that someone smoked a joint the night before or 5 minutes before the shift?

With alcohol, breathalyzers provide an easy way to immediately detect the impairment.

The FAA prohibits pilots from drinking 8 hours before a flight. They further recommend 24 hours of abstention. It’s not okay, Zircom.

https://www.faa.gov/pilots/safety/pilotsafetybrochures/media...

cannabis tests check 30 days, not 8 hours. Hangovers can happen past 8 hours as well. Balls in your court, w0de0.

There's a difference between using 2 days ago and testing positive on a piss test, and being actively intoxicated.

Nobody should be intoxicated on the job.

However if they smoked a joint yesterday they shouldn't lose their job today when it's already out of their system.

> Airline pilots? People operating dangerous machinery?

As long as they are rested and alert when on the job, there is zero reason to care what they do in their private time off.

Again, how would you make sure that they don't lie about it?

What exactly is “dangerous machinery”? I frequently operate overhead cranes, lifting 0,5-5000 kilos. I also smoke pot. To be frank, I would be able to do my job somewhat high, but not drunk. Smoking a joint the day before work has minimal impact on my performance, I would argue it increases it because of a good nights sleep. Drinking alcohol on the other hand…

I wonder if there has been any studies around marijuana impairment and vehicle operation?

I worked at a California startup that got aquired by a huge east coast corporation. At the all hands where the east coasters were introduced, one of them announced that we would all have to get drug tested within 2 weeks. We just looked at each other and then slow rolled them for the next month, lol. Eventually we all went and got tested together and no one got fired.

I'd love to see a comparison between the amount of whiskey and blow consumed by people who get drug tested and the amount of weed smoked by people who don't.

I worked for a while in the military industrial complex. The only legal outlets for modifying your reality were alcohol and sex. So there were lots of people who drank heavily and swapped wives. They were quite open about it, because keeping it a secret could cause you to lose your security clearance (it made you blackmailable). They were also very accepting of whatever your skin color was, because the military demanded it. It was something of a shock moving to an industry job and discovering that racism still existed.

>it made you blackmailable

Is wife swapping like less blackmailable escape than prostitutes? Clearance life hack.

they definitely have recruiting problems

Saying "it's okay to do something bad" (smoke weed) because "someone else did something worse" (drink booze) is hardly an argument.

Both are not ideal for people in positions of public trust.

I don't want my intelligence officers drunk OR high. Is that too much to ask?

Nobody is saying they should be high on the job. People are saying we shouldn't fire employees for having a beer or a joint a week ago on vacation.

The status quo endorses the former and demonizes the latter.

I don't interpret neither OP nor the first comment this way. What is brought up is the hypocrisy of talking down on any cannabis user while being drunk at work yourself, and positive drug tests that are not related to actual intoxication at work (since cannabis can be detected for a while after coming down).

Ever? Like they go on vacation to visit their families, and they shouldn't be allowed to drink or smoke?

I could maybe see this for the highest leadership--the President, 4-star generals, people who are politically or functionally on-call 24/7. But for everyone else, the rule should be, don't show up to work impaired, either drunk or stoned or hungover. (Though I'm not sure how to deal with chronic pain conditions in that case).

For an intelligence officer, I would say, yeah, you should probably never be high or drunk. Maybe "never been high/drunk" is too strict.

If you're mopping the mess hall, you can probably go home and have a six pack if you want. Just not on the job...

What!? That’s absurd. Have you considered the practical implications of that for even a moment? Who takes that job?

Puritanical nutcases would be my guess.

Or, we could call them non-degenerates.

You can call them whatever you like, I suppose.

Mormons, apparently. They also tend to have good foreign language skills and a willingness to serve. But they represented in the FBI etc to the point it's slightly problematic. The drawback GP is missing is that selecting too heavily from one group can have unintended adverse effects since you lose out on diversity of ideas and approaches - I would absolutely expect many intelligence officers to drink and do other things people might frown upon, because very often the people they need to know and talk to _won't_ be teetotallers or care much about such things.

A lot of people would probably be willing to give up a minor drug or alcohol habit to have/keep a high-paying intelligence job.

I would certainly accept being "always sober" as a condition of employment if the job was one I really wanted.

I can't find the study, but I seem to remember that alcohol consumption follows the 80/20 rule. A small amount of alcohol consumers consume basically all the alcohol, with non-alcholics consuming very little. If you consume very little, it's probably not a big deal just to go without completely.

I think I might prefer a high president than a drunk president if a surprise ww3 broke out.

I wouldn't. Hard-drinking military leaders have a good track record, e.g., U.S. Grant, whereas the world has little or no experience AFAIK with high leaders.

You mean to say that there isn’t as big a public record of leaders consuming illicit substances?

Good point, but regardless of the reason, there remains the lack of a publicly-documented track record.

Wait till you hear about politicians. I don’t know what the US Capitol is like in this regard but the Westminster parliament for instance is notorious for the number of bars onsite, and the amount consumed in them by its members (all subsidised!)

> I don't want my intelligence officers drunk OR high. Is that too much to ask?

On the job? I agree with you.

Off the job? Do you mind if an inteligence officer who is not on duty let’s say on a fourth of july, bbq-s some burgers with his friends and family and then drinks four beers? Enough to be considered as impaired if they were to drive. But they don’t drive. They don’t babble about secrets. They talk about sports and then they sleep it off. Would you mind that?

And would you mind the same if it were a canabis joint instead of the beers?

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