The U.S. trucking business is bleedin’ drivers, and it ain’t no mystery why. We got a mess right here in this country where what’s fine in your home state can get you fired by Uncle Sam. Folks are legalizin’ that marijuana left and right, but the federal government. The one that gives out them CDLs still treats marijuana like the devil’s lettuce. That head-buttin’ between state and federal law is the biggest darn reason our trucker pool is dryin’ up, causin’ a big ol’ hole in our supply chain.

They call it The Disqualification Trap. The big shots at the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) make every trucker get drug tested. Since they still got marijuana as a Schedule I drug, a positive test means you’re outta there, plain and simple. The trick is, that test don’t tell ’em if you’re high now; it picks up THC leftovers from weeks ago. You can be sittin’ at home, legally smokin’ after your shift, and still get yanked off the road ’cause that residue is stickin’ around. They ain’t testin’ for impairment; they’re testin’ for your past, and it’s gettin’ folks good and disqualified.

This problem is bigger than a load of coal, bless your heart. Since the FMCSA started that Clearinghouse in 2020, marijuana has been the drug in over 60% of all them positive tests. As of late 2024, over 178,000 drivers are sittin’ in “prohibited status,” meaning they can’t drive a rig legally. Most of ’em ain’t payin’ for that costly, drawn-out “Return-to-Duty” program. They just quit the industry for good. Every one of them drivers that walks away shrinks our good ol’ American driver pool just a little bit more.

Now, The Immigrant Dilemma makes this whole thing a doggone shame. If you ain’t a full-blooded citizen, the federal government still considers any marijuana use a federal crime, even if your state says it’s okay. That means if an immigrant who wants to drive a truck so much as admits to takin’ a hit, they risk gettin’ deported or told they can’t come in. That stiff penalty scares off a key group of folks we need to keep the wheels rollin’.

So, when you take all that away—y’all disqualifyin’ our local boys and scarin’ off the new folks—you end up with A Vacuum for Foreign Labor. This driver shortage is huge, somewhere between 65,000 to 80,000 drivers short. Naturally, the companies gotta find drivers somewhere, so they look to foreign-born folks, who already make up ’bout 18% of the U.S. trucking workforce. They’re fillin’ the holes the government is diggin’.

The whole thing is just The Policy Backfire writ large. They say they’re lookin’ out for safety, but they’re makin’ rules that push out good workers and then wonder why the shelves are empty. They even made it harder recently for folks like DACA recipients to get a CDL. It just proves that that old, outdated federal ban on marijuana is the main culprit messin’ up our labor supply and makin’ our whole nation’s logistics shaky as a newborn calf.