It was the summer of 1986, and journalist Jesse Katz hoped to secure a two-year training position with the Los Angeles Times after completing an internship. A year prior, he applied for the same job but was turned down due to inexperience. Facing the same editor, Katz felt just as inexperienced as he was a year ago, but this time, the editor didn’t seem concerned about his resume. After offering him the position, the editor made one necessary disclosure, “I should let you know, we have a policy now of drug testing new employees [for marijuana].”
Katz wasn’t much of a stoner back then, he told L.A. TACO during an interview, but his former roommate was, and he suspected they might have toked up recently. The editor suggested Katz push the test back a few weeks. “We’re not trying to be punitive,” he recalls the editor saying. “This isn’t a gotcha sort of thing.”
Looking back, Katz says the drug testing policy was “stupid” but at the same time “not surprising” given the proliferation of drug testing during the 1980s and 90s. Recently he called the policy “cannabis theater.”
“It seems really antiquated,” he said.
Putting off the piss test put Katz in a “bizarre situation.” He had a job waiting for him, and all he had to do was “wait for the drugs to wear off.” So while he sobered up for about a month, he took a job as a phone book delivery person to pay the bills. When it came time to take the drug test, he passed. A year later, he was hired full-time.