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While the reduction in absenteeism sounds modest on paper, the compounding productivity gains are proving to be a massive win for industries reliant on manual labor.
Employers still struggling with the dilemma of how to test and potentially sanction worker use of marijuana in states where the drug has been legalized might want to follow the lead of workplace tokers and just chill out. It turns out authorized use of cannabis for medical reasons actually reduces the days those employees call in sick—leaving managers shorthanded when they do—and has no effect on recreational user absence.
Consider that pot’s unexpected payoff amid the continued spread of legal cannabis consumption.
Weed’s role in reducing worker absenteeism was determined in an analysis by researchers from the University of Georgia and the University of Southern Maine. Published this month by the Journal of Workplace Behavioral Health, the study “evaluated the impact of medical and recreational cannabis laws in the United States on health-related workplace absenteeism across different demographics, occupations, and industries.” What that revealed was that people puffing pot on a doctor’s prescription—or when self-medicating recurring ailments—came to the job nearly 7 percent more frequently than before laws permitting that form of treatment were passed.
“The findings indicate that medical cannabis decriminalization reduced the likelihood of health-related work absences by about 6.9 percent,” the study said, adding the beneficial effects were particularly marked in certain sectors. “The absenteeism-reducing effects of medical cannabis decriminalization were notable in occupations (e.g., manual laborers, machine operators) and industries (e.g., manufacturing, agriculture, construction) where conditions more predisposed to cannabis treatment (e.g., chronic pain associated with physical work) are prevalent.”
Medical cannabis in pain and stress management
True, choking down aspirin throughout the day doesn’t produce the same reddened eyes and frequent complaints about munchies that pot does. But cannabis is doubtless easier on the employee’s stomach—and according to some research, is often more effective mitigating pain, stress, anxiety, and other discomforts, while also helping improve workplace safety.
The University of Georgia and Maine research was based on crunching monthly data from the Current Population Survey between January 1990 to March 2025. In doing that, it took different approaches than most previous studies in two specific ways.
First, it differentiated between the time when states decriminalized cannabis use, and the period when they began regulating (and taxing) sales of it. In the meantime, it distinguished between the “effects of medical cannabis legalization (MCL) and recreational cannabis legalization (RCL) on health-related workplace absenteeism in the United States.”
That method allowed study authors to determine that decriminalization of cannabis “had a larger quantitative effect and greater statistical significance than the commencement of regulated sales.”
But it also established that rather than fulfilling expectations that more people smoking weed would increase the absenteeism that costs employers about $225 billion annually, it instead reduced the number of days stoners called in sick—with a caveat.
That effect was significant only when the drug was used for medicinal reasons.
“This study identifies a statistically significant and quantitatively meaningful effect of medical cannabis laws in the United States on reducing health-related workplace absenteeism, particularly when policy exposure is measured using the effective dates of decriminalization,” the study said. “Medical cannabis laws appear to reduce sickness absence in settings where therapeutic use is likely to be most relevant, whereas recreational cannabis laws may generate a more mixed pattern of effects that depends on whether one focuses on health-related absences, overall absenteeism, workplace injuries, or broader labor supply and work-capacity outcomes.”
Pot also linked to improved workplace safety
And what about RLC users smoking weed or chomping gummies just for fun? Well, they don’t call in sick more than non-tokers, but their absentee rate also doesn’t decline as it did among medical users.
“(W)e find no statistically significant effect of RCL on health-related absenteeism, whether recreational laws are measured using decriminalization dates or the commencement of regulated sales,” the study notes.
Those findings overlap with earlier studies that indicated legalization of cannabis for medical use coincided with a drop in fatal workplace accidents, compensation claims for those mishaps, and even a boost in weekly hours worked.
In other words, employers may actually have more to gain by turning a blind eye to moderate marijuana use among staffers than they do testing and weeding out the tokers in their midst.
This post originally appeared at inc.com.
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