Amazon says it's 'actively supporting' federal marijuana legalization

Weed Capitol Hill — Activists from the DC Marijuana Justice (DCJM) wave flags during a rally to demand Congress to pass cannabis reform legislation on the East Lawn of the US Capitol in Washington, DC on October 8, 2019.
Olivier Douliery / AFP via Getty Images

Legislation to federally decriminalize marijuana was reintroduced in Congress last week.
On Tuesday, Amazon said it back the effort.
The company will also stop drug testing for marijuana.
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Amazon said their public policy team will be actively supporting The Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act of 2021, an effort to federally legalize marijuana.

"We hope that other employers will join us and that policymakers will act swiftly to pass this law," Amazon's consumer CEO, Dave Clark, said in a statement.

The company will also no longer include marijuana in drug tests for positions not regulated by the Department of Transportation.

"In the past, like many employers, we've disqualified people from working at Amazon if they tested positive for marijuana use," Clark said. "However, given where state laws are moving across the U.S., we've changed course."

The MORE Act passed in the House of Representatives in December 2020 and would end criminal penalties for anyone who sells cannabis in states where its legal and decriminalize the use of cannabis throughout the US. It would also formally allow states to chart their own course in establishing commercial marijuana sales.

The bill was reintroduced in Congress last week.

"Since I introduced the MORE Act last Congress, numerous states across the nation, including my home state of New York, have moved to legalize marijuana," House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler said in a statement. "Our federal laws must keep up with this pace."

Amazon also said it was updating its "time off task," a system that measures worker's productivity. The system tracks how man packages employees complete in an hour and sends alerts whenever employees take a break from scanning packages for too long.

Clark said the company will now measure time off over a longer period of time.

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