After hearing just how frequently employees and industries get high at work, you may already wonder how many survey participants were high during this study as well. At the end of the study, we asked respondents if they happened to be high as they answered these questions about work, and 8 percent said yes.

High on (Work) Life

Ever since Colorado and Washington legalized marijuana, other states have followed suit, both medicinally and recreationally. With modern American employees adapting to these new laws and social norms, the workplace is changing as a result. A 60 percent increase in workplace marijuana use has occurred since 2014, and office parking lots now frequently host smoking sessions.

Individuals should make sure to use their best judgment when it comes to understanding how marijuana impacts their potential job performance and safety. Office culture, location, even industry and roles all come into play. When in physical pain, in a state of anxiety, or even on a particularly slow day, many employees may take refuge in the use of marijuana. So long as safety remains paramount, and you follow your local rules and regulations, the decision to engage or abstain from marijuana is your own decision.

Methodology and Limitations

For this analysis, we harvested responses from 1,000 people by launching online surveys through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. To qualify for this survey, participants had to pass a round of screener questions pertaining to the study. All participants were employed – in some capacity – whether full time or part time. Participants who selected unemployed or retired as their current employment status were disqualified. Additionally, an attention-check question was used to identify and disqualify respondents who weren’t paying attention. Some questions and answer choices may have been bucketed and relabeled for clarity. Industries that failed to meet a minimum sample size of 26 respondents were not included in the industry-related subsets.

Of the 1,000 employed individuals that were polled, 64.1 percent identified as millennials, 8 percent were baby boomers, and 26.2 percent belonged to Generation X. The remaining 1.7 percent were a part of Generation Z or the silent generation. Furthermore, 46.5 percent of respondents were women, and 53.5 percent identified as men. The participants surveyed ranged in age from 18 to 75 with a mean of 36.

To determine the change in productivity levels among respondents who had been high at work, we had survey takers rate the productiveness at work when sober and then to rate their productiveness while high at work. They were presented the following scale for both questions:

Very unproductive

Unproductive

Somewhat unproductive

Somewhat productive

Productive

Very productive

Based on this order, we were given the means to determine if being under the influence of marijuana while at work resulted in respondents being more or less productive or whether they experienced no change in productivity levels. For example, if a respondent rated their productivity at work as “very productive” while sober at work, but “productive” while under the influence of marijuana at work, this was considered “less productive,” while still maintaining a positive productivity level.

To calculate the increase of employees being high at work over the past five years, we compared our 2019 survey findings to that of Mashable’s and SurveyMonkey’s 2014 study, which found that nearly 10 percent of employees went to work under the influence of marijuana. The difference between the two polls is that our analysis surveyed 1,000 employed respondents, whereas their study only had around 534 survey takers.

The main limitation of this analysis is that the findings are based on self-reported data via a questionnaire. There is an abundance of issues associated with these data such as, but not limited to, exaggeration and telescoping. Statistical testing was not performed on the claims made in this study, and this content was created for entertainment purposes.

Fair Use Statement

Are you working while high? Marijuana might not be legal where you live or work, but sharing this article for noncommercial purposes is. You just have to be sure to link back to this page so that its contributors can receive proper credit for their work.