Medical Marijuana use by city employees among topics of council-mayor retreat
The annual City Council-mayor retreat Wednesday was a first step in the joint effort to set the city of Tulsa's priorities for the upcoming year. Among highlights of that discussion: city staff with medical marijuana patient licenses.
Currently, the city can test employees for drug use and can discipline an employee if THC metabolites are detected.
City Councilor Grant Miller suggested the city take another look at the policy, arguing that it should consider treating medical marijuana as it would any other prescription medication.
Medical marijuana has been legal in Oklahoma since a statewide vote in 2018.
Miller said this is a particularly important issue because of the opioid crisis that has affected communities across the country, including Tulsa.
“We have got doctors handing out prescriptions to city staff and to firefighters for the very same thing we are allegedly trying to combat,” Miller said. “It’s a big problem.”
Mayor G.T. Bynum told councilors he is open to discussing the issue further, but he stressed after the meeting that he does not know the subject well enough to make an informed decision.
“The challenge for me is: If it is a drug that Oklahomans can lawfully utilize, but we screen it, there is a discrepancy there,” Bynum said. “The reason that it is provided for in state law that public safety personnel can’t utilize it, I think, is because of the challenge around testing for intoxication.
“And I don’t know how we can do that in a quick, easy way. We don’t want to have situations where we have people intoxicated operating public-safety machinery or responding to public-safety emergencies.”
