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Amazon Wants to Legalize It

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Photo: Lauren DeCicca (Getty Images)

Amazon wants to see recreational marijuana use legalized at the federal level, according to a new blog post from Dave Clark, the CEO of Amazon’s consumer side businesses. The company will also stop drug testing for weed, according to Clark, and treat cannabis like mainstream employers already treat alcohol. Presumably, that means you shouldn’t do it on the job, but go ahead and smoke it in your own home after work hours.

Amazon said in a blog post (emphasis ours):

In the past, like many employers, we’ve disqualified people from working at Amazon if they tested positive for marijuana use. However, given where state laws are moving across the U.S., we’ve changed course. We will no longer include marijuana in our comprehensive drug screening program for any positions not regulated by the Department of Transportation, and will instead treat it the same as alcohol use. We will continue to do impairment checks on the job and will test for all drugs and alcohol after any incident.

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But it gets even better:

And because we know that this issue is bigger than Amazon, our public policy team will be actively supporting The Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act of 2021 (MORE Act)—federal legislation that would legalize marijuana at the federal level, expunge criminal records, and invest in impacted communities. We hope that other employers will join us, and that policymakers will act swiftly to pass this law.

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How about that? Curiously, this announcement was part of a blog post about Amazon’s desire to be “Earth’s Best Employer and Earth’s Safest Place to Work.” And let’s just say the tech giant isn’t quite there yet, given the whole pissing in bottles thing.

But the weed thing probably makes Amazon maybe 1% less evil! Now about that unionization stuff...