Federal Report: Fewer Private Sector Employers Engaging in Drug Testing
Washington, DC: A diminishing number of private sector employers are testing their workers for the use of controlled substances, according to survey data provided by US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Researchers reported that the percentage of private worksites engaged in drug screening fell by nearly half since 1996, the last time the agency probed the issue. In the latest survey, about 16 percent of respondents said that they drug tested their employees.
Industries related to transportation, utilities, construction, and manufacturing were among those most likely to engage in drug screening. Companies employing larger numbers of people (100+ employees) were also far more likely to drug test than were smaller employers.
Employers were least likely to engage in drug testing if they resided in a state that has legalized the adult use of marijuana. Several of these states limit certain employers' ability to drug test either prospective or current employees for past cannabis exposure. By contrast, none of the ten states with the highest rates of drug testing have legalized marijuana for recreational purposes.
Separate survey data provided in 2021 by the Manpower Group reported that an estimated nine percent of employers had recently "eliminated job screenings or drug tests" as a way to either attract or keep their employees.
Last year, representatives of the Amazon corporation announced that the company would no longer engage in pre-employment marijuana screenings for its new hires, except for those in federally regulated positions (that mandate drug testing). The Amazon corporation is the second-largest employer in the United States.
Urinalysis, the primary form of workplace drug testing, detects the presence of inactive marijuana byproducts that may be present for as many as 100 days post-abstinence. The detection of these products only indicates that a particular substance is present in the test subject's body. It does not indicate either recency of use or impairment.
Additional information is available from NORML's fact sheet, 'Marijuana Legalization and Impact on the Workplace.'
Study: Tourette Patients Respond Favorably to Cannabis
Tel Aviv, Israel: Patients with Tourette syndrome (TS) experience reductions in tic severity and improvements in their overall quality of life following cannabis treatment, according to trial results published in the journal Behavioral Neurology.
Israeli researchers assessed the use of medical cannabis products in 15 patients with Tourette syndrome over a 12-week period.
Subjects experienced, on average, a 38 percent reduction in their tic severity – as assessed by the Yale Global Tic Severity Scale. A significant percentage of study participants also reported improvements in mood, sleep, and sexual function.
Patients were most responsive to formulations high in THC and low in CBD and they favored inhaling cannabis flowers over consuming sublingual oil extracts.
The most commonly reported side-effects from cannabis were dry-mouth, fatigue, and dizziness.
Authors concluded: "From our data, it is suggested that MC [medical cannabis] might be a treatment option for resistant TS patients, and MC has a significant effect on tics, premonitory urges, and patients' overall quality of life."
Separate trials have similarly reported that the administration of either whole-plant cannabis or oral THC mitigate symptoms in patients with TS, including those with treatment-resistant forms of the disease.
Full text of the study, "Medical cannabis for Gilles de la Tourette syndrome: An open-label prospective study," appears in Behavioral Neurology.
Survey: Gender Influences Patients' Cannabis Product Preferences
Los Angeles, CA: Women are more likely than men to express a preference for edible medical cannabis products, and for products with explicit ratios of THC to CBD, according to survey data compiled by the healthcare technology company Veriheal.
Researchers analyzed survey responses from a convenience sample of medical cannabis patients in the Veriheal database. Data was obtained from patients throughout the United States over a one-year period. Patients ranged in age from 18 to 85, with a majority of subjects falling between the ages of 25 and 29.
Female survey respondents were more likely to express interest in trying edible formulations of cannabis. According to the survey's results, 71 percent of women expressed a preference for edible products. By contrast, 81 percent of men expressed a preference for cannabis flower.
More women than men also expressed interest in products containing both THC and CBD. While one-third of female respondents said that they preferred products with specific THC/CBD ratios, only around one-quarter of male respondents did so.
Men and women were nearly equally likely to seek out cannabis in order to improve sleep and reduce chronic pain. Women were nearly twice as likely as men to report using cannabis to mitigate symptoms of nausea.
"This study demonstrates the complexity of decisions made by medical patients when choosing a route of administration for cannabis products. The preference for cannabis edibles in women is evident, and the factors contributing to this preference are varied," authors concluded. "Societal stigmas which influence women in their cannabis consumption choices may become outdated as society begins to accept cannabis as medicine. An increased use of cannabis as medicine is likely to lead to more oral formulations as a parallel to or part of the pharmaceutical industry. While oral consumption may have stark differences from smoking, its popularity seems to be increasing, and women are apt to support their growth in the adult use market."
Full text of the survey, "Veriheal's Annual Medical Cannabis Preference Report," is available.
Study: Cannabis Self-Administration Associated with Nausea Relief
Albuquerque, NM: Over 90 percent of nausea patients who self-medicate with cannabis products report that it is effective at relieving their symptoms, according to data published in the Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology.
A team of researchers affiliated with the University of New Mexico, College of Pharmacy assessed the effects of cannabis on nausea symptom intensity in 886 subjects over a three-year period. Study participants self-administered cannabis at home and reported symptom changes in real time on a mobile software application.
Ninety-six percent of subjects reported symptom relief following cannabis administration. Participants, on average, experienced a reduction in their symptom intensity of -3.85 points on a 0 to 10 visual analog scale. Most participants began experiencing statistically significant relief within five minutes of cannabis inhalation. Flower preparations containing higher percentages of THC and lower percentages of CBD were rated most efficacious.
"The findings suggest that the vast majority of patients self-selecting into cannabis use for treatment of nausea likely experience relief within a relative short duration of time," investigators concluded. "Future research should focus on longer term symptom relief, including nausea-free intervals and dosing frequency; the risks of consumption of medical cannabis, especially among high-risk populations, such as pregnant women and children; and potential interactions between cannabis, conventional antiemetics, other medications, food, tobacco, alcohol, and street drugs among specific patient populations."
Oral THC, in the form of dronabinol, has been FDA-approved as an anti-emetic agent since the mid-1980s.
Using similar methods, UNM researchers have previously reported that cannabis exposure is associated with real-time reductions in migraine symptoms, pain intensity, stress, depressive symptoms, as well as improvements in sleep.
Full text of the study, "The effectiveness of common cannabis products for treatment of nausea," appears in the Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology.
Survey: Cannabis Use Associated with 50 Percent Reduction in Pain Scores
Hempstead, NY: Chronic pain patients report significant reductions in their pain scores following the use of cannabis, according to survey data published in the Open Journal of Anesthesiology.
Investigators affiliated with Hofstra University in New York and the Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine in Spokane surveyed patients receiving care in a pain clinic setting.
Respondents' average pain scores fell from 8.4 prior to using medical cannabis to 4.275 afterward. Participants also reported improvements in sleep and overall daily functioning.
The study's authors reported: "Medical marijuana offers numerous benefits such as better management of pain as demonstrated by the participants of this study. The responses in this study showed a 50 percent reduction in pain levels after use of medical marijuana. Other benefits that we observed include decreased levels of anxiety, increased appetite, decreased migraines, reduced swelling, improvement in mood as well as an increased quality of life as reported on the surveys."
They concluded, "[This] survey shows that medical marijuana is efficacious in chronic pain patients and further studies need to be done and access to the medication needs to be improved so as to benefit more patients."
Those who consume cannabis medicinally are most likely to report doing so to address chronic pain conditions. Dozens of studies further report that pain patients typically reduce or eliminate their use of opioids following their initiation of cannabis therapy.
Full text of the study, "Medical marijuana efficacy: A survey," appears in the Open Journal of Anesthesiology.
