W EEKLY EDITION JULY 17, 2019
Legal Marijuana:
Driving the Portable Sanitation Industry Crazy…Part 1
By Karleen Kos, PSAI Executive Director …Continued from page 2
A ll of this would present a challenge for
employers even if service technicians were
falling from heaven – training and hiring costs
are not cheap. In the present environment,
though, it prese nts nightmares. There is a
significant shortage of truck drivers in
general, and the headaches that go along
with legalized pot only make the challenge of
staffing your company with reliable and
competent drivers more difficult.
An August 2017 article published by
Trucks.com, notes that more trucking
companies and commercial driver's license
schools are telling candidates not to fill out
applications if they're goin g to test positive.
Even with that caveat, the article says that
failure rates are still as high as 60 percent,
according to Greg Fulton, president of the
Colorado Motor Carriers Association.
Meanwhile, the Journal of Commerce (JOC)
predicts the number of eligible truck drivers
will dwindle even further when the new
national drug and alcohol test clearinghouse
comes online in January 2020. So it is plain
that these headaches for drivers' employers are not imagined and will not be going away any time
soon. That's because federal law forbids both medical and recreational consumption of marijuana. Any
portable sanitatio n company with drivers and trucks that fall under federal Department of
Transportation (DOT)/Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) mandates must ensure that
their drivers are clean for that drug – among many – to the best of their ability. (S ee a full list of
federally prohibited substances in the DOT handbook on drug and alcohol testing here .)
Is it e v e r ok ay f or p o rta b le s an i t ati o n d ri ve r s t o u s e p o t? In theory anyway, a portable
sanitation company operating in a state where the use of marijuana is legal could sidestep these issues.
To do that the company would:
P AGE 10
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