Employers are in a tough position when it comes to whether they can (or should) test employees for marijuana use. A key question is what they learn from the tests, which are limited, and whether they're better served with investments in supervisor training to ensure safe work environments. Listen in to this dynamic conversation between Terri L. Rhodes, DMEC CEO, and Kathryn Russo, an attorney with Jackson Lewis P.C., who helps employers avoid legal potholes.

Heather Grimshaw: Hello, and welcome to Absence Management Perspectives: A DMEC Podcast. I'm Heather Grimshaw, communications manager for DMEC. I'm here today with Terri Rhodes, CEO for DMEC, to showcase Terri's Trends article series, and today we'll be talking about legalized marijuana use and its effects on employers. Terri has more than 30 years of experience in the absence management industry, and she is going to facilitate the conversation about marijuana drug testing with Kathryn Russo, an attorney and principal with Jackson Lewis, P.C., who wrote an article about this topic in the Integrated Absence Management issue of @Work magazine. We've unlocked the article “Navigating Legalized Marijuana in the Workplace” for podcast listeners and included a link to it in the notes section of this podcast. We've asked Kathryn to elaborate on some of these issues in her discussion with Carrie today, which dovetails with Carrie's article about the issues employers face when it comes to marijuana testing and her latest Trends article. We included a link to this Trends article in the Notes section as well for ease of access. Terri, I'm going to hand things over to you to get us started.