“This Is Serious”: Marijuana Involved in Guyana Ferry Tragedy as U.S. Employers Are Looking the Other Way
At least 27 people are dead and dozens more missing after a passenger ferry capsized off the coast of Guyana…
At least 27 people are dead and dozens more missing after a passenger ferry capsized off the coast of Guyana this weekend. The captain and at least one crew member have tested positive for marijuana and are now in police custody as a criminal investigation proceeds.
The vessel was carrying 179 people when it went down. “We have a zero tolerance for members of the crew drinking or smoking while at work,” Public Works Minister Juan Edghill told the Associated Press. “And for us to have positive tests from the captain, this is serious.”
It is a foreign headline that hits close to home here in the United States: marijuana use among workers is climbing and, increasingly, employers are choosing not to look.
According to Quest Diagnostics’ 2026 Drug Testing Index, marijuana positivity in workforce hair tests jumped 58.9 percent over five years, reaching 15.1 percent in 2025, more than half of all positive hair tests. Overall hair-test positivity hit 19.1 percent, a marker of recurring or chronic use. Retail workers posted the highest marijuana positivity of any category, at 7.6 percent, while healthcare workers had the highest overall drug positivity of any industry.
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Yet employer concern is fading. The Wall Street Journal reported this month that Citigroup, AutoNation, Home Depot, and Amazon have all dropped pre-employment marijuana screening in recent years. Outside safety-sensitive fields like trucking and construction, many companies now treat marijuana like alcohol.
“The moment marijuana use puts someone at the helm of a ferry, in the cockpit of a plane, or at the controls of heavy machinery, it stops being that person’s business alone,” said Dr. Kevin Sabet, president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana. “It becomes everyone else’s business too, because it’s their safety on the line.”
In Guyana, the investigation into who was at the helm — and what was in their system — is only beginning. The question the data raise for American workplaces is whether anyone is still checking.
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