August 07, 2007
New Hiring Rules To Boost FBI Cheetos Consumption?
The FBI no longer deems pot a dealbreaker. Newly relaxed hiring practices mean that marijuana use no longer disqualifies you from employment with the bureau -- provided you haven't touched the stuff in three years.
Of course, the new rules don't mean that the guys from "Clerks" will be tasked with fighting the domestic war on terror. Jeffrey Berkin, an FBI deputy assistant director, cautioned the Washington Post, "Our standards are still very high. The level of drug history would still have to be something that we would characterize as experimental."
The bureau's decision to let its hair down has been a couple years in the making. In 2005, AP reported that FBI officials had grown "deeply frustrated that they could not hire applicants who acknowledged occasional marijuana use in college, but in some cases already perform top-secret work at other government agencies, such as the CIA or State Department." Indeed, the world's most famous clandestine intel agency has a 12-month window for past drug use and will still "carefully" consider applicants who have dabbled more recently.
USA Today reports that the new policy has been in place since January, though the FBI hasn't made a big public to-do about it. Berkin told the paper that the more stringent policy was scrapped in part because some applicants "couldn't remember how many times they had smoked pot when asked in polygraph examinations."
With abuse of harder drugs like methamphetamine and oxycodone seeping into rural areas, Americans young and old are more inclined to view marijuana as a relatively benign substance. According to federal statistics, about 40 percent of Americans 12 and older have toked up at some point in their lives.
The nation's police departments and the U.S. Army are also facing the fact that many Americans love their weed. The military has lowered the bar on prior drug use and drug testing to compensate for sluggish wartime recruiting. Back in 2000, the Los Angeles Times made waves when it exposed 52 of 80 new recruits in Denver's police department as having used drugs. The most popular drug was, not surprisingly, marijuana. Other PDs have followed suit and relaxed prior drug-use rules in order to keep their numbers high -- er, up.
