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Colorado NASCAR driver suspended for medical marijuana use
Category: Medical Marijuana | Posted on Wed, August, 24th 2011 by THCFinder
DENVER - A NASCAR driver has been suspended indefinitely after testing positive for marijuana. But Ronnie Hults says he got the drug legally, as a prescription for chronic pain.
 
While the state constitution allows people to smoke and buy medical marijuana, those rules may not apply to your workplace.
 
More than 127,000 people have medical marijuana cards in Colorado, but all can be suspended or fired if their employer has a policy against drug use.
 
That is what happened to Hults and now his NASCAR career could be over.
 
"Since I was a kid I've always told everybody I'm going to be a racecar driver," he said.
 
Hults, whose nickname is "speedy," says his doctor prescribed him medical marijuana for chronic back pain from a car accident.
 
"I'm only using medical marijuana at night to sleep when my hips are on fire and I have back pain," he said.
 
Three weeks ago, before a big race, NASCAR officials told Hults there was a problem.
 
"They drug tested me at 8 a.m. that morning," he said. "They said somebody called to complain that I was a 'nemesis' to the race track."
 
Hults says he was not high when he got behind the wheel.
 
"I am sober at the time when I race a car," he said.
 
"Ronnie is not doing this at the track or before a race. He's not endangering anybody," Gabriel Schwartz, Hults' attorney, said. "We're a medical marijuana state. It's in our state constitution."
 
Scwartz wants NASCAR to change its drug policy.
 
However, Amendment 20 to the Colorado Constitution, which covers medical marijuana, says: "Nothing in this section shall require any employer to accommodate the medical use of marijuana in any work place."
 
"As it stands right now, the employer's got all the cards," Curtis Graves, an attorney with the Mountain States Employers Council, said.
 
Graves says that means your boss can punish you, even if you have a prescription.
 
"If [an employer] says you're fired for testing positive for marijuana, then that's the way it goes," he said.
 
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