Drug tests generally can determine if a person smoked or ingested marijuana in the past week but can’t determine if he or she is impaired. So does this make testing for marijuana a worthless endeavor for employers, especially since most pot use is recreational and done hours or days before an employee begins work? According to a 1985 Stanford University study of airline pilots, no.
In the study, 10 experienced private airplane pilots each smoked a low grade marijuana cigarette before carrying out complex and stressful landing maneuvers in a computerized flight simulation laboratory. They did the maneuvers one hour, four hours and 24 hours after smoking pot. During all three tests, the pilots experienced significant impairment.
All of the pilots were experienced marijuana users. They did not show or feel impaired 24 hours after smoking pot, yet they still crashed the planes in the simulated test.
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