Officials told White House staffers that some past marijuana use wouldn’t disqualify them. But later officials asked some staffers to resign.
Dozens of young White House staffers found themselves suspended. The administration also asked staffers to resign. Or placed them in remote work programs due to past marijuana use. According to people familiar with the situation. Staffers were led to believe that recreational use of cannabis would not be disqualifying for would-be-personal. But that is not the case currently.
Drug Policy for Past Cannabis Use
This policy has affected people across the spectrum. Even staffers whose marijuana use was exclusive to one of the 14 states where cannabis is legal. Officials asked some staffers to resign, and even put some on probation. Simply because they revealed past marijuana use in an official document required for a background check.
According to thedailybeat.com “Nothing was ever explained” on the calls, they added, which were led by White House Director of Management and Administration Anne Filipic. “The policies were never explained, the threshold for what was excusable and what was inexcusable was never explained.”
The White House press secretary Jen Psaki tweeted out on Friday an NBC News report from February. That stated the Biden Administration wouldn’t automatically disqualify applications if they admitted to past marijuana use. Psaki said only 5 people who started working at the White House are “no longer employed as a result of this policy.”
The White House plays by their own rules when it comes to past cannabis use. Every agency like the FBI and the NSA has varying rules about past use. In February the White House told NBC News that as long as past use was limited. And the candidate wasn’t pursing a position that required a security clearance, past cannabis use may be excused.
Typically, barring past convictions, a candidate’s personal drug history is based on the honor system. Although it is a felony to lie on the SF-86 Form. Over the years the rules phase out and some of them are more flexible. For example, the existence of nude photos of a candidate are no longer automatically disqualifying.
Advocating for Change
The Biden administration has attempted to modernize the White House’s personnel policy in terms of cannabis use. The number of allowable instances of past cannabis use did increase from the Trump and Obama administrations. Cannabis use disproportionately affects younger appointees and those from states with legalized cannabis programs.
However, the president remains the final authority on who can receive a exemption or a clearance for past cannabis use.
Advocates for marijuana continue to fight. So that any admission of cannabis use shouldn’t justify being penalized or prevented from working in the federal government. Rep. Don Beyer said in a tweet “This is not a hard call: we absolutely should not deny the U.S. government or the White House the services of highly qualified individuals – or trample their careers, dreams, and futures – just because they used marijuana.”
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