Have YOU had 'slow' service recently? There's a good chance your waiter was ... trends now
Have you gone out to eat in a restaurant anywhere in the US over the past year and been disappointed by slow service or scatterbrained staff?
There is a one in 12 chance your server was stoned on the job, figures suggest.
A recent analysis of over six million urine tests from Quest Diagnostics, the world's largest network of diagnostic labs, showed that in 2022 over eight percent of restaurant staff use cannabis either in their free time or during work.
The rate of urine tests among food service workers coming back positive for marijuana has more than doubled since 2018 - amid a wave of legalizations of the drug.
The food service industry led the way in workers who use marijuana with a 43 percent increase in positivity, having risen from about 5 percent in 2018 to seven percent in 2022
There has been a steady upward slope across all major industries, most drastically among food service and hospitality workers, followed by retail workers, drivers and warehouse workers, realtors, and wholesale traders
The above shows cannabis use across American states. Twenty-one states and DC have legalized it for recreational use in addition to medicinal use, while nearly all now allow it to be used for medicinal purposes.
The rapidly rising rates of marijuana use across all industries from retail to warehousing 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 now allow it to be used for medicinal purposes.
The marked increase in cannabis use among restaurant workers from 2018 tracks with that year’s wave of measures to loosen prohibition on the drug.
For example, in 2018, Vermont became the first state in the nation to enact legalization by an act of lawmakers instead of through a ballot initiative and was signed by a Republican governor.
Also in 2018, voters in three deep red states – Missouri, Oklahoma, and Utah – overwhelmingly approved medical cannabis via ballot measures while at the same time electing Republicans to federal office or nominating conservative candidates for statewide office.
While these and
