BUS273 medical marijuana workplace project guide
A business-law project that pins you to a place on purpose: an Elko County, Nevada employer with 20-99 non-union staff — which makes the federal-versus-state conflict, and Nevada's unusually employee-protective cannabis statutes, the actual subject of all four questions.
Editorial process
Last reviewed · August 11, 2026
Why does the Elko County setting decide the answers?
The scenario's geography is the assignment's hidden spine. Elko County means Nevada, and Nevada is not a neutral choice: it legalised medical and recreational marijuana while marijuana remains a federal Schedule I substance, and it went further than most states by restricting what employers can do about it — its 2019 law made rejecting applicants over a positive pre-employment marijuana test unlawful for most positions, with carve-outs for safety-sensitive roles and federally regulated drivers. Every one of the four questions changes answer depending on whether you argue from federal law, Nevada law, or the collision between them, and the paper the brief wants — 'factual data and not an uninformed opinion piece' — is one that names the statutes and lets them constrain the conclusions. State the jurisdiction in your first paragraph and cite the statutes as you go; the grader's first scan is for whether the paper knows where it is.
Work the questions in the scenario's own terms. Off-duty use: Nevada protects employees' lawful off-duty conduct in ways many states do not, but impairment at work is never protected, and your industry choice matters — the scenario's own menu (manufacturing, mine contracting, hospitality) spans safety-sensitive and customer-facing work where the carve-outs bite differently. Enforcement of federal versus state law: a private employer can generally maintain a drug-free workplace policy, and federal contractors face additional obligations, but 'can' and 'must' diverge — this question wants the layered authority explained, not a side picked. Whichever industry you pick, say so early and hold it constant — the analysis cannot float between a casino and a mine without changing its legal footing. The consumer-facing duty and the safety-sensitive carve-out are different arguments, and the choice decides which one you owe.
The firing question is deliberately doubled: 'Can you fire' is a legal question about Nevada's testing and adverse-action rules for confirmed on-the-job positives; 'Should you? Why?' is a management judgement about turnover, labour supply, safety exposure and consistency — and the brief's mention of your significant turnover is planted for exactly this paragraph. The final considerations question is your synthesis: insurance and workers' compensation, federal contracts, testing policy design, and the practical reality of enforcing a policy in a small labour market. Answering 'should you' with the same statute you just cited for 'can you' is the tell that the doubled question was read as one; the second half wants the owner's judgement, priced in turnover and replacement costs.
The compliance details are unusually loud: 1,250-2,000 words excluding cover, abstract and references; at least five academic sources beyond those the instructor supplied; APA per the feedback on your earlier paper; and a plagiarism screen. The brief also cites its own statistics from 2018 — updating the state counts from the same legislative-tracking source it quotes is an easy, visible way to show the research the assignment demands. Do the update in one sentence with the year attached, and the paper immediately reads as researched this term rather than recycled.
Likely learning objectives
Inferred from the brief — check these against your own rubric.
- 01Ground each answer in the federal-state conflict the scenario is built on: Schedule I status against Nevada's legalisation and employee protections.
- 02Distinguish what an employer legally can do from what it prudently should do, as the firing question's double structure demands.
- 03Apply Nevada's safety-sensitive and federally regulated carve-outs to the scenario's own industry menu.
- 04Support claims with statutes and legislative trackers rather than opinion, meeting the brief's factual-data standard.
- 05Update the brief's own 2018 state counts with current figures from the same source it quotes.
Read the full question
Review every instruction before using the planning guidance that follows.
Course-wide instructions that accompany this question
You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes. Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages. Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor. The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.
Turn the brief into deliverables
- 01An APA-formatted research paper of 1,250-2,000 words, excluding cover page, abstract and reference pages.
- 02Answers to the four stated questions from the assumed position: an Elko County business owner with 20-99 non-union employees, stable but with significant turnover.
- 03A minimum of five academic sources with in-text citations, in addition to instructor-supplied materials.
- 04Original work — the brief states submissions are screened through plagiarism detection.
How should the four legal questions be sequenced?
The legal landscape, layered
Open with the conflict the brief's preamble sets up: federal Schedule I status, Nevada's medical and recreational legalisation, and the updated state counts from the legislative tracker the brief itself cites.
Off-duty use: responsibility to staff and consumers
Answer question one with Nevada's off-duty conduct protections against the employer's duty to maintain a safe workplace and serve consumers — and show how the answer shifts across the scenario's industry menu.
Enforcement: what federal versus state law allows
Answer question two by mapping what the employer can enforce: drug-free workplace policies, impairment rules, testing regimes — and where Nevada's statutes restrict adverse action that other states permit.
Can you fire? Should you?
Split the doubled question: the legal analysis of terminating for a confirmed positive test at the business under Nevada law, then the management judgement — turnover costs, replacement difficulty in a small labour market, consistency and morale — with the 'why' argued.
The considerations synthesis
Close with question four as synthesis: insurance and workers' compensation exposure, federal contracting implications, testing-policy design, documentation, and supplier relationships the brief's preamble flags.
Which statutes and trackers carry the legal analysis?
Recommended databases
- NCSL cannabis legislation tracking
- Nevada Revised Statutes
- Law-firm employment alerts
- Academic databases for the five-source minimum
Search sequence
- 1.Pull current state counts from the NCSL medical cannabis laws page — the same source the brief quotes at 2018 values.
- 2.Read the analyses of Nevada's 2019 pre-employment testing law for the employer-side rules and carve-outs questions one and three depend on.
- 3.Locate Nevada's lawful off-duty conduct statute and its marijuana case law for the off-duty question.
- 4.Find five academic sources — law review notes and peer-reviewed employment-policy studies on workplace cannabis clear the brief's academic bar where news articles do not.
Reference shortlist
These are authoritative starting points, not a ready-made bibliography. A qualified reviewer must confirm that each source fits the assignment and supports the claim beside which it is cited.
Nothing here is cleared for citation until you have read it.
- 01
State Medical Cannabis Laws
National Conference of State Legislatures · 2024
The brief's own cited source, current edition — for updating the state counts and grounding the legal-landscape opening in the tracker the instructor already trusts.
- 02
Nevada Becomes the First State to Restrict Employer Use of Pre-Employment Cannabis Tests
Seyfarth Shaw LLP · 2019
Employment-law analysis of Nevada's AB 132 — the statute's rules and safety-sensitive carve-outs that questions one and three turn on, from a firm that advises employers.
- 03
Nevada Prohibits Pre-Employment Discrimination for Marijuana Use
Clark County Bar Association · 2020
A Nevada bar treatment of the same law with local practice context — the closest source to the scenario's own jurisdictional seat.
Review before submission
Common mistakes
- Writing a general marijuana-and-work essay that never lands in Nevada — the Elko County assumption is the assignment's whole point, and generic answers are wrong answers here.
- Treating the firing question as one question when it is two: the legal 'can' has a statutory answer and the managerial 'should' has a business one, and the brief demands the 'why'.
- Picking a side in the federal-state conflict instead of explaining the layered authority — what federal law prohibits, what Nevada permits and protects, and where employer discretion actually lives.
- Ignoring the scenario's planted facts: the turnover problem, the non-union status, and the industry menu all exist to be used in the considerations answer.
- Citing advocacy sites when the brief demands academic sources and factual data — legislative trackers, statutes and law-firm analyses of the statutes are the register.
- Quoting the brief's 2018 figures as current when the same tracking source publishes updated counts — an unforced error in a research-graded paper.
Submission checklist
- Word count between 1,250 and 2,000 excluding cover, abstract and references.
- All four questions answered from the Elko County employer's position.
- Nevada's specific statutes (lawful off-duty conduct, pre-employment testing restrictions) named and applied, with the safety-sensitive carve-outs.
- The 'should you' answer argues from the scenario's facts — turnover, industry, labour market.
- Five or more academic sources beyond instructor materials, cited in-text in APA.
- State-count statistics updated from the brief's own cited tracker.
Use this guide to plan and review your own work. Follow your institution's rules and read our academic-integrity policy.
Written by
Aaron Bishop
MA, Education
assignment interpretation and research-methods coaching across disciplines
Aaron leads the EssayCrackers editorial desk. He works on how assignment briefs are read — what a rubric is actually asking for, and where students most often answer a different question than the one set.
Reviewed by
Dr. Nathan Cole
PhD, Rhetoric & Composition
Argumentation and thesis development
Nathan teaches first-year composition and directs a university writing center. He reviews EssayCrackers guides for argumentative soundness and citation accuracy.