Tens Of Thousands Of Truckers Are Testing Positive For Marijuana And Leaving The Industry Amid Labor Shortage, Federal Data Shows

Cannabis News World

Feb 1

Tens Of Thousands Of Truckers Are Testing Positive For Marijuana And Leaving The Industry Amid Labor Shortage, Federal Data Shows
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Tens of thousands of commercial truckers tested positive for marijuana as part of federally mandated screenings, data from the Department of Transportation (DOT) shows. And a significant portion of those truckers have declined to return to work, contributing to a labor shortage. In 2022 alone, 40,916 truckers tested positive for inactive THC metabolites, which can stay in a person's system for weeks or months after use and do not reflect active impairment. The number increased by 32 percent compared to 2021. Data from DOT's Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) shows that, since 2020, more than 100,000 truckers tested positive for cannabis, as Transport Topics first reported. Marijuana was by far the most common banned substance to come up in the drug screenings. Overall, there have been approximately 166,000 people who tested positive for some prohibited substance since 2020, according to a report that FMCSA's Drug & Alcohol Clearinghouse published last week. There is an option for those truckers to enter a "return-to-work" process that would require another drug test; however, the data shows that a large fraction of people are not taking the opportunity. About 91,000 of those 166,000 truckers who didn't pass the drug screening have not enrolled in the process yet. This would be problematic from an economic standpoint in any industry, but it's especially troubling in the transportation sector, which has been facing a significant labor shortage. "The Transportation Department's reliance on this outdated technology and upon these discriminatory policies is out of step with reality and is directly contributing to the trucking shortage crisis," NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano said in a blog post. "Suspicionless marijuana testing in the workplace is not now, nor has it ever been, an evidence-based policy. Rather, this discriminatory practice is a holdover from the zeitgeist of the 1980s 'war…