A Doctor’s Take: What Workers’ Compensation Pros Should Know About Marijuana

With marijuana becoming more widely accepted, both socially and legally, those involved in workers’ compensation are seeing the drug creep into their purview with higher frequency.

But marijuana’s increased mainstream acceptance doesn’t mean workers’ comp professionals don’t have concerns when it comes to outright covering the cost of marijuana or, more conservatively, reimbursing for it.

For starters, marijuana is still considered a Schedule 1 drug at the federal level, a category reserved for “drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.”

Even if it’s legal in the state a business operates in, readily covering something still classified in the same category as heroin, at least on a federal level, can feel risky.