The Marijuana Policy Project is calling upon shoppers across the country to join in a boycott of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. in order to protest the unjust and potentially unlawful firing of Joe Casias, a 29-year-old medical marijuana patient and sinus cancer survivor who suffers from an inoperable brain tumor.
After dutifully working at a Wal-Mart in Battle Creek, Michigan, for five years, Casias was suddenly terminated because he tested positive for marijuana during a drug screening administered after he sprained his knee on the job. To make matters worse, Wal-Mart is contesting Casias’s eligibility for unemployment, and Michigan has the nation’s highest unemployment rate, at almost 15%.
MPP is asking shoppers to demand that Wal-Mart abandon its discriminatory policy of firing employees who are legal medical marijuana patients under state law.
We need to send a strong message to Wal-Mart and other businesses in medical marijuana states that it is not acceptable to fire sick people for trying to get better by following their doctor’s recommendation and obeying state law. Marijuana is a legitimate medicine, supported by science and protected by law in 14 states, including Michigan.
To send Wal-Mart an email saying that you disapprove of its policy and will refrain from shopping at Wal-Mart stores until it changes, click here.
Many arguments for ending marijuana prohibition are familiar, including the potential tax windfall, freedom of personal choice and the financial and societal costs of a policy that's a failure as a practical matter. Now, a new book uses documented scientific and medical evidence to make a less familiar argument: that punishing adults for using marijuana is senseless because, compared with legal and widely accepted alcohol, it's far less harmful.
Steve Fox, director of state campaigns for the Marijuana Policy Project, visited the Trib to discuss "Marijuana is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink?" (Chelsea Green). Following are excerpts from Fox's discussion of the book...