Call For Wal-Mart Boycott Yields Small Victory
One day after MPP called for a nationwide boycott of Wal-Mart stores in order to protest the company’s contemptible and baseless firing of Michigan medical marijuana patient Joe Casias, the world’s largest public corporation is already changing its position — albeit not to the extent we all desire.
A Wal-Mart spokesperson has told Fox News that the company is no longer challenging Casias’s eligibility for unemployment, reversing the despicable stance it took before news of the firing made national headlines.
While this change falls far short of the treatment Joe deserves after dedicating the last five years of his life to being a model employee for Wal-Mart, it’s at least a sign that Wal-Mart is feeling the heat from mounting criticism in a country that supports medical marijuana laws by more than 80%.
So let’s keep up the pressure! Allowing Casias to collect unemployment still doesn’t change Wal-Mart’s discriminatory policy of firing medical marijuana patients who are following state law and a doctor’s recommendation.
To learn how to e-mail Wal-Mart’s CEO to say you stand in solidarity with Casias and want Wal-Mart’s policy to change, click here.
March 17, 2010 43 Comments
MPP Calls For National Boycott of Wal-Mart
This morning, the Marijuana Policy Project called upon shoppers across the country to join in a boycott of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., in order to protest the unjust and potentially unlawful firing of Joe Casias, a 29-year-old medical marijuana patient and sinus cancer survivor who suffers from an inoperable brain tumor.
After dutifully working at a Wal-Mart in Battle Creek, Michigan, for five years, Casias was suddenly terminated because he tested positive for marijuana during a drug screening administered after he sprained his knee on the job. To make matters worse, Wal-Mart is contesting Casias’s eligibility for unemployment, and Michigan has the nation’s highest unemployment rate, at almost 15%.
MPP is asking shoppers to demand that Wal-Mart abandon its discriminatory policy of firing employees who are legal medical marijuana patients under state law.
We need to send a strong message to Wal-Mart and other businesses in medical marijuana states that it is not acceptable to fire sick people for trying to get better by following their doctor’s recommendation and obeying state law. Marijuana is a legitimate medicine, supported by science and protected by law in 14 states, including Michigan.
To send Wal-Mart an email saying that you disapprove of its policy and will refrain from shopping at Wal-Mart stores until it changes, click here.
March 16, 2010 85 Comments