Before Shreveport Arrival, Amazon Will Drop Marijuana Testing

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Amazon will be brining a $200 million Robotic Fulfilment Center to Shreveport by the end of 2022. According to officials involved in the planning, this new facility will create roughly 1,000 direct jobs, and 1,800 indirect jobs in the Shreveport area. The hiring for these positions is expected to start in mid-2022.

When the hiring process does begin in Shreveport, a major piece of the pre-employment screening for Amazon will be different. In a blog post, the CEO of Amazon's Worldwide Consumer Division Dave Clark, said Amazon will no longer conduct drug testing for marijuana.

Here's the quote from Clark's post:

"In the past, like many employers, we’ve disqualified people from working at Amazon if they tested positive for marijuana use. However, given where state laws are moving across the U.S., we’ve changed course. We will no longer include marijuana in our comprehensive drug screening program for any positions not regulated by the Department of Transportation..."

There are two notes about this though. First, as Clark pointed out in the quote, positions that are still regulated by the Department of Transportation will continue to have marijuana screenings as a part of the employment qualifications. Second, there will still be "impairment checks" one the job, which will also be conducted after any kind of accident. But this will be more similar to alcohol policies than previous marijuana policy.

In addition to the changes inside Amazon, Clark posted that the company will be actively supporting The Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act of 2021 (MORE Act). This is Federal legislation that would not only legalize the recreational use of marijuana at a Federal level, but will also expunge the criminal records of those convicted of crimes that would now be legal. Another large part of the MORE Act involves investments in communities that have been hurt by current marijuana penalties, and incarceration rates.