Home Depot plans to do away with testing prospective employees for marijuana and will ban screening current staffers for pot, according to a report.
The big box retailer — which employs roughly 400,000 people in more than 2,000 locations nationwide — sent memo earlier this week saying that “marijuana will be removed from all drug panels” throughout the company’s US-based operations, according to the news site Marijuana Moment.
The directive from the human resources department said the company will also ban testing for marijuana following a workplace accident and in cases where there’s reasonable suspicion that an employee was impaired, according to the site.
Pre-employment drug testing for marijuana “will only be conducted for external candidates with contingent offers in Asset Protection and Corporate Security,” according to the memo cited in the report.
The changes are reportedly set to take effect on Sept. 1.
The Post has sought comment from Home Depot.
“Home Depot continually evaluates our policies, the external environment, and benchmarks with other companies to ensure we remain competitive while complying with local, state, and federal laws,” read the memo, whose contents were first circulated on a Home Depot-linked Reddit forum.
A Reddit user wrote that they were informed of the new protocol during a morning meeting on Monday.
The user wrote a post on the subreddit r/HomeDepot that they were told “that on Sept 1st, marijuana will no longer be tested for; this will include reasonable suspicion. Also, lift equipment drug testing will go away too.”
“I heard it as well, but not in a meeting,” wrote another Reddit user who claimed that they were informed by “a person in a position to know with no reason to lie to me.”
“It was announced at corporate today,” wrote another user on Reddit.
Another commenter added: “It’s been emailed to members of management…I imagine it’ll be discussed at staff meetings today.”
Later on Monday, a Reddit user wrote that the change was “now posted in the Viva HR community with an HR communications PDF dated from the Aug 23rd.”
The new initiative will make Home Depot one of the largest private companies to do away with screening for marijuana.
Amazon, the e-commerce giant with a global workforce of 1.5 million people, announced back in 2021 that it would stop testing many of its employees for marijuana.
Some states have passed legislation designed to shield workers from disciplinary action for consuming cannabis.
California barred employers from asking job applicants about past marijuana use and most companies are barred from penalizing employers over legal use of marijuana outside of work.
Washington State prohibits companies from refusing to hire someone based on past use of marijuana — though the law does not protect employees from penalties incurred as a result of use of marijuana outside of work.
