Have YOU had ‘slow’ service recently? There’s a good chance your waiter was stoned

Have you dined out at a restaurant anywhere in the US in the last year and been disappointed by the slow service or absent-minded staff?

There is a 1 in 12 chance that your server got stoned on the job, according to numbers.

a recent analysis more than six million urine tests from Quest Diagnostics, the world’s largest network of diagnostic laboratories, showed that by 2022, more than eight percent of restaurant staff will use cannabis in their spare time or on the job.

The number of urine tests among hospitality workers coming back positive for marijuana has more than doubled since 2018 — amid a wave of legalizations of the drug.

There is a steady upward trend across all major industries, most drastically among food service and hospitality workers, followed by retail workers, drivers and warehouse workers, brokers and wholesalers

The above shows cannabis use in US states. Twenty-one states and DC have legalized it for recreational use in addition to medicinal use, with almost all of them now allowing its use for medicinal purposes.

Rapidly rising rates of marijuana use across all industries from retail to storage reflect growing society-wide acceptance of the drug, which is now legal for recreational use in 21 states and the District of Columbia and nearly all of them allow that it is now used for medicinal purposes. purposes.

The marked increase in cannabis use among restaurant workers from 2018 is consistent with that year’s wave of measures to relax the ban on the drug.

For example, in 2018, Vermont became the first state in the nation to pass legalization by an act of lawmakers rather than by ballot and was signed by a Republican governor.

Also in 2018, voters in three deep red states — Missouri, Oklahoma, and Utah — overwhelmingly approved medical cannabis through ballots, while simultaneously electing Republicans for federal office or nominating Conservative candidates for statewide office.

While this and subsequent legislative action has won major victories for marijuana legalization activists, many ordinary Americans are less than enthusiastic about their impact on the service industry.

Steve Cuozzo, the New York Post’s restaurant critic, said: ‘Am I the only one who thinks most service people in NYC are stoned? Starbucks, fast food, Duane Reade, waiters etc? Can’t you make a change, lose sight of what they’re doing?’

Another frustrated netizen saidI usually think it’s funny, but I just had a diner lose my credit card. Yes, gone never to be seen again. My best guess is that it accidentally ended up in the trash.”

The rates at which people use marijuana have increased 54 percent in all industries over the past five years, from a rate of 2.8 percent of workers testing positive for the drug in 2018 to 4.3 percent in 2022, the highest positivity rate for marijuana since 1997.

Accommodation and food services led the way with a 43 percent increase in positivity, after rising from about 5 percent in 2018 to seven percent in 2022.

The states where marijuana is legal for recreational use saw the strongest increases in test positivity rates. In states with legal recreational marijuana, positivity rates rose nearly 12 percent between 2021 and 2022. In states where the drug is only legal for medical purposes, the increase was smaller by about eight percent.

The latest positivity data has been collected from more than 6.3 million urine tests performed on staff and analyzed by Quest Diagnostics. After the food service industry, the retail industry had the highest proportion of employees using marijuana.

Keith Ward, General Manager and Vice President for Employer Solutions at Quest Diagnostics said, “This historic rise appears to be consistent with a sharp increase in marijuana positivity in both pre-employment and post-accident drug testing, suggesting that changing societal attitudes about marijuana may influence workplace behavior and endanger co-workers.”

Still, these staggering increases don’t necessarily mean the server is high at work, just that they’re using the drug in general.

THC, the psychoactive chemical in marijuana, is fat-soluble, meaning it binds to fat molecules in the body, meaning it can stick around for days or even weeks, depending on frequency of use. So someone who took the drug on Saturday could test positive on Tuesday.

But the steady upward trend across all major industries, coinciding with a wave of legalization efforts over the past decade, suggests that more people are using the drug overall, which may include in the workplace.

And with an increasing general use that increases year by year. Many people choose to smoke, vape or take an edible before work to boost their mood or creativity, although there is mounting evidence to suggest that the drug provides no creative benefit.