Across Victoria, doctors prescribe medicinal cannabis, a lawful prescription medicine, for a range of complex and chronic health conditions. But current Victorian workplace drug testing regimes can treat these legitimate patients as criminals.
Medicinal cannabis patients are being caught up by workplace illicit drug testing, and then treated in the workplace as if they have tested positive for illicit drugs, when they haven’t. This is not the case with any other prescription medicine, even impairing medications, such as opioid based analgesics.
Medicinal cannabis patients should be allowed to take their medicine in the same way as any other prescription medication. Where a patient is not impaired by their medicine at work, it should not be a bar to gainful employment.
It is unfair, it is discriminatory and it is costing people their jobs and their livelihoods.
