Nothing.
Except that the potheads that run the federal gov't have decided to ignore existing law.
Failed DOT Pre-Employment Drug Test. Emergency Medical Revocation
- Thread starter CFII252
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Nothing.
Except that the potheads that run the federal gov't have decided to ignore existing law.
vontresc
En-Route
Meh I could care less about people smoking the stuff as long as they aren't impaired. Problem is now that some states have legalized pot, you still have to deal with the federal rules. Also don't be a moron and smoke that stuff if you know you have to pee ion a cup. that should be basic common sense (even a total burnout will know that).
azure
Final Approach
Wait a few years, and that problem will go away. More and more states are considering legalizing the stuff, so people will likely soon have other states to go to for "cannabis tourism". In New England especially, Vermont will soon follow suit unless the upcoming elections bring a sea change, and according to our governor Maine and Massachusetts have pending legislation and are likely to go the same way soon. Several other states are likely to follow.
JCranford
En-Route
Yeah, that was kinda my point. I don't care so much if you smoke weed, but if you're too stupid to fail a drug test you know may be coming, you might be too stupid to fly a plane
Cloves have none of the psych effects of THC.
Everskyward
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Everskyward
Actually the voters did.
RotorDude
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THC is not something you'd want to use while flying, or operating machinery.
And its long term effects could reduce your general proficiency.
I think you need to decide between flying and THC, or any other mind-altering drug.
dell30rb
Final Approach
How is this any different from alcohol
Yep, don't expect the FAA to get more tolerant on pot no matter what the criminality ends up being. Alcohol is legal now and if you have a history of abuse, you still can't fly.
Everskyward
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Marijuana is apparently detectable through testing for a much longer period than alcohol. You can bet if alcohol was detectable by testing a week or a month out...
There are all kinds of legal drugs the FAA does not approve for use, drugs which do not excite the arbiters of morality among us. Even if marijuana becomes federally legal I would not expect that it would be approved by the FAA.
As you can see in this thread, if you use enough of it, you will be able to forget those effects.
azure
Final Approach
No way will it be approved for use while flying, or soon before. Once it becomes legal on the federal level, they will need to establish a "toke to yoke" policy similar to the present "bottle to throttle", as well as a hard limit to blood concentrations of at least THC and perhaps its metabolites as well.
How to regulate how much THC is automatically assumed to be under the influence is one of the thornier questions facing Vermont's legalization movement right now. Also, Gov. Shumlin has gone on the record as favoring a .05 limit for drivers found to have both alcohol and recent use of cannabis by blood testing, an interesting proposal. I'm not sure how solid yet the science is on determining by bloodwork whether a person can be presumed to be under the influence of THC, nor how long ago they ingested the drug. Opponents insist it can't be done yet, and therefore we'll have an unenforceable plague of stoned drivers if legalization goes through. Proponents insist we already have that plague and legalization will not likely make it significantly worse. But no one that I've heard has convincingly argued that we can reliably tell with a blood test when someone is stoned. (Of course, that's true of alcohol as well, due to differences in physiology that allow one person to be barely affected at .04, while another is visibly impaired at .02 or even less.)
denverpilot
Tied Down
Actually I love them. They go back to their hotels and sit around stoned and spend a lot of money while here, and generally cause little harm. And they're helping my company out... Pre-employment and random drug screening for employment is a booming business. I've whined about the effects signing a HUGE company for their post-test Medical Review calls is for our IT staff, and how maybe the company underestimated the costs of their "security" requirements, but in the end it's big revenue.
The Doctors do get burnt out on telling the crying people that "No, I doubt you'll get the job, honey..." after they went over the results showing the person was so high on coke they almost died from an OD and that was standing in a drug testing facility hours later! You would not BELIEVE the upper limits of the human body's ability to be tortured with toxic things.
I'm more annoyed with the ones that move here for it. They tend toward the needy and dumb end of the spectrum.
People who live in States without Referendum ability often forget that democracy is about direct voting. Not that we're supposed to be a democracy, we're supposed to be an oligarchy with the semblance of people voting when they're really not. At least that's how it was designed... But Referendums are fun, until they're not.
Colorado needed a new boom/bust cycle.
Druggies making poor life decisions in regard to their employer's drug policy and DOT regs are paying some portion of my salary. Growth industry all around.
Druggies paying for my flying? What's not to love? Everyplace they're "legalized" will need more and more private companies to go over the results with staff that didn't pay attention to the HR person when they got hired. (Or DOT, or FAA, or whoever's limiting them...) We're all set to help feed the bureaucracy... Got the software, the people to man the phones, the Docs... And where to send the checks. ;-)
Everskyward
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I don't notice anything much different in Colorado other than the fact that you see more places selling it. To me it was a big yawn.
AggieMike88
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The original "I don't know it all" of aviation.
I still remember the last year when you guys took me to dinner while I was in town and there was a dispencery next door. When I said I had wanted something with local flavor, I was wondering if you were taking it a bit too literal.
RJM62
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Geek on the Hill
I doubt legalization would make any practical difference in terms of safety. I suspect that any laws written around the question would be the result of careful analysis of what wording would produce the most revenue, not anything even remotely related to safety.
Rich
Everskyward
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I'm not sure how anyone presumably intelligent enough to be a pilot could think that the FAA would approve of this.
Tom-D
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Who said Pilots were smart?
Matthew
Touchdown! Greaser!
Are the trash cans at the DEN rental car returns still a good place to find stuff that people toss before they fly home?
azure
Final Approach
I suspect you're correct that legalization won't be much of a detriment to automotive safety, largely because most of the people who would be inclined to drive stoned probably already do. But in the Vermont debate the issue comes up all the time, how to convict stoned drivers when we don't yet have standards for establishing intoxication. The other issue one hears raised frequently is keeping the stuff out of the hands of kids.
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dell30rb
Final Approach
I was replying to the quoted post, stating that marijuana is dangerous if you smoke before flying, and long term use will affect your proficiency. Not necessarily about testing. Obviously drinking and flying is a terrible idea, and long term alcohol use will really hurt your working memory, affecting your proficiency.
It seems many people think THC does a lot more than make you goofy for a few hours, lumping it in with "mind altering" hallucinogens like LSD that have much more serious effects that can last days, weeks or even be permanent.
For the record, I don't smoke. Its not legal here, and not worth the risk. Even if it was, it's not something I would do regularly, I find people who use the stuff regularly are not people I want to hang out with.
mscard88
Touchdown! Greaser!
A few weeks ago on that Dan Rather Interviews show, he had Willie Nelson and of course Dan asked about Willie about his Weed Co (forget the name). Willie said it'll be legal country wide within 5 years. Ole Willie a trip!
He is probably right.
Otoh he is a good example of what happens to your brain if you bathe your nerve cells in the stuff for an extended period of time.
Everskyward
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I think that the FAA should limit themselves to regulating drugs which could be dangerous at the time of use and a certain amount of time thereafter. I don't think people should fly soon after drinking alcohol or smoking weed. But if weed is made federally legal, I don't think there should be a blanket prohibition which extends weeks or months into the past, just because it's detectable. As far as what the long term effects are, it obviously depends on the frequency of use, and I don't think there has been any clear correlation shown. Regardless, we don't ban smokers from flying even though they are statistically more succeptable to heart attacks and strokes.
It depends what the test is. Your regular breath or blood EtOH test is pretty much geared at determining whether you are currently intoxicated. There are other tests that can be used to determine longer turn use/abuse.
Believe me if you've shown up on the FAA radar as being an abuser of alcohol, you're going to have some fun as well. The FAA doesn't like substance abuse no matter what the moral or legal implications are.
Everskyward
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I have only had breathalyzer tests for alcohol. The weed tests were pee tests. In any case substance use is not necessarily abuse.
172andyou
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You turn into a talented musician who lives a long happy life?
Seriously, the scientific consensus is that long term exposure is either completely harmless (i.e. there has never been a large scale study demonstrating persistent long term effects from regular use) or *dramatically* less harmful than similar exposure to alcohol. So unless we're going to have a meaningful discussion about creating new alcohol prohibitions then pot should be legal too.
EdFred
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James331
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Problem is what the FAA views as "abuse" I mean there is huge difference between a real alcoholic and some young guy getting busted for a DUI at a check point, I've heard about folks not even blowing a .08 and getting poped
Everskyward
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The OP gambled and lost, but on the plus side it seems as if the OP has sought out good professional advice rather than the internet babble we dispense here.
Seriously, the regulations are what they are regardless of what I, the OP, or anyone else wishes there were.
azure
Final Approach
They do treat chronic alcohol abuse more severely though, as witness the much more difficult time given to DUIs who blew or tested over 0.15 at time of arrest. The reasoning is that if you can drive at all (much less stand to take the test) with that much EtOH in your system, you must have a tolerance, and tolerance implies chronic use, i.e. abuse.
As far as getting busted with less than .08, that's possible because in many (most?) states .08 just means you're presumed to be drunk on blood level alone. If the police find that you're impaired with less, you can still get arrested for DUI.
Matthew
Touchdown! Greaser!
I would like to think that anybody that "recreates" and then walks into a drug-screening is either not smart enough to get that job, or was told he had a very tight schedule to meet and would be treated as a "positive" if he didn't show. Maybe the OP was in the second scenario, gambled and lost?
That's the way DOT and pilot screenings work. If you don't show for your drug test, you're assumed to be dirty. However, it's still arguably better to be strung up for missing the test (serious as that is) than to be documented hard as a substance abuser.
AggieMike88
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The original "I don't know it all" of aviation.
My guess is that the OP was caught up in the moment of his honeymoon, and wasn't thinking about the FAA's views on controlled substances or his flying career when he was offered the opportunity to partake. And then consumed enough so that it remained in his system when is reported for the whiz quiz many weeks later.
In some emails between he and I, he's asked questions about Dr. Bruce and the HIMS process. What I have learned leads me to believe he isn't a habitual user. Just someone whose one time "let's party big time" event got him wrapped around the axle. He has found the HIMS AME list and is seeking guidance from someone close to him. He is aware that he is grounded for a very long time and subject to an extensive and expensive process to return.
So generally, some of the gallery's comments are on point, such as, if you know you're subject to whiz quizzes where your livelihood depends on it, abstain from consuming the substance. Consuming anyhow and then reporting is a foolish endeavor.
But for the OP's situation, he is learning the lesson that a one time "living in the moment" activity when you are being held to a high standard by a Federal Agency has some difficult consequences.
bullwinkle
Pattern Altitude
True, but "use" is not the same as "abuse". If it becomes legal federally, the FAA will have to come up with some standard of intoxication. A blanket prohibition on the use of a common legal substance would not fly (pun intended). IMO,as long as you are not impaired while operating the aircraft, I don't give a rat's rear what you do on your own time.