ALBANY (AP) — Dan Harmon is not celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Oregon Medical marijuana Act.

Harmon chairs the Drugfree Workplace Legislative Work Group, which wants the state Legislature to make substantial changes to the law approved by voters in November 1998.

“We are going to push hard this next session,” Harmon told members of the Albany Area Chamber of Commerce last week. “We’ve told the legislative officers, ’You’d better tape your socks on, because we’re going to come hard.”’

One of the first orders of business, Harmon said, is to reintroduce Senate Bill 465, which would exempt employers from having to accommodate medical marijuana users, no matter when or where they use the drug. The Senate approved the bill in 2007, but it couldn’t clear the House.

The work group also wants to delete some of the conditions currently approved for treatment with marijuana, restrict the approval of new conditions, require employer notification when a worker applies for a medical-marijuana card and stiffen penalties for those who violate the act.

Besides leading the work group, Harmon is the executive vice chairman of a large Portland construction firm and a board member of Associated Oregon Industries, one of the state’s most powerful business groups.

In his talk to the Albany chamber, he cited several reasons why employers would want to think twice about hiring medical marijuana users, including concerns about workplace safety, legal liability and the potential loss of federal contracts. He also said Oregon’s medical marijuana law is being widely abused, and the law itself “says something about permissiveness in this state, and we’ve got to stop this permissiveness.”

More than 20,000 Oregonians have cards authorizing them to use marijuana for medicinal purposes.

Harmon has been touring the state for more than a year, giving similar presentations to chambers of commerce and other organizations.

A handful of medical marijuana advocates have attended or tried to attend Harmon’s presentations to challenge what they say are distorted claims about medicinal pot. A half-dozen activists who tried to attend the Albany forum were turned away.

“We’ve been haunting these people for a while now, and I’m sure they wish we’d go away,” said Sandee Burbank, executive director of Mothers Against Misuse and Abuse, an organization that lobbies for more liberal drug laws and operates a medical marijuana clinic in Portland.

“They get real loose with the facts when nobody’s around to call them on it.”

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