4 ms·

There are plenty of other things you can have done that are illegal and still get a clearance. Without touching if it's a good policy or not, drug use is a blac

There are plenty of other things you can have done that are illegal and still get a clearance. Without touching if it's a good policy or not, drug use is a black mark during a clearance investigation not because it's illegal, but because you're using drugs. I wouldn't be surprised if these agencies continue to disallow clearances due to legal drug use. Depending on the level of clearance, alcohol use, poor finances, multiple passports, and having contacts with foreign nationals from certain countries - all legal activities - are reasons for a clearance being denied.

gh02t 5y ago
Yeah I asked someone in human reliability about this not too long ago, she said even if it's made legal they are unlikely to change the restrictions any time soon. She said (and I'm not commenting on the validity of this line of reasoning myself, nor was she really) the argument is along the same lines of why you're also not supposed to be routinely getting wasted drinking -- it shows a pattern of unreliable behavior and there is also a risk of disclosing information when intoxicated. She did say that they might slightly relax the restrictions if weed was made fully legal.
- namlem 5y ago
  Which is still incredibly unscientific. Cannabis doesn't even really lower inhibitions.
  - edgyquant 5y ago
    Do you have a source for this?
frankbreetz 5y ago
If you admit to using weed in the past year, they will make you wait to get your clearance. As long as you don't have any DUIs or legal trouble from drinking you will not be restricted. Unless you say something like "I have a serious drinking problem and get blackout drunk every night" Drinking is not an issue, even people who do drink too much will consider themselves moderate drinkers, even if they are lying to themselves. So, admission to responsible weed usage and responsible alcohol usage will get different results. I have a clearance and almost all of my coworkers talked openly about drinking too much on occasion, but no one would say they touched weed
- throwaway6734 5y ago
  The one year thing is no longer the case based on my experience. Some friends of mine had extensive marijuana use in a legal state up to 5 months before being successfully cleared
  - frankbreetz 5y ago
    They did for me about 4 years ago, they didn't explicitly state this, so it could have just been a backlog, but a lot of people got their clearance quicker during this period.
  - frankfrankfrank 5y ago
    That is happening, but it is also both a function of a crumbling system and a bit of desperation of the system to hire people, whether they are necessary or not. The system does not really care about the drug use as much as it cares about whether whatever the factor, you can or cannot be manipulated because of it. The caveat of that being though that the system used to function on that basis, something that I am increasingly witnessing is no longer the case. What we are really living through right now is a kind of civilizational event horizon where, e.g., one society/culture has no remaining knowledge of what something really was for or how it was really used or what systems created it, even as they still use or worship it or perform certain rituals simply out of repetition and custom. A rather good example of this process is the whole "space race" where the Germans pioneered space travel technology, which ended in a kind of collapse of the whole knowledge base to the point that the USA was hitching a ride on Russian rockets just to get to an aging space station, and where space travel had to essentially be rediscovered by SpaceX, etc. I don't think people quite understand what happened in that 1955-2010 period where the "advanced society" of today stumbled upon the ancient technology of the 1955-1960s when men with straight edges and graphing paper put men on the moon and brought them back home and couldn't figure out how exactly they did it … something that has still not been replicated.
- dahfizz 5y ago
  This goes a bit beyond just cultural taboo. A breathalyzer test can determine if you are under the influence of alcohol _at this moment_. No such test exists for weed. The only way to prove someone is not high is to do the usual urine test, which returns positive if you've smoked at all in the past ~month. It's a liability thing. If a "weed breathalyzer" is invented and employers can prove that you are sober when reporting to work, I think smoking in the evening will become much less of an issue.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
frankfrankfrank 5y ago
It goes far beyond just "because you are using drugs" … it is a national security or any security risk for someone to be dependent and pliable, not only on or by drugs. I was going to make this a long explanation, but it can easily be summed up by if you can be manipulated by it, then the system will deem it a threat because you are a weak point. That means the affair you did not confess to your wife or that you fear ostracism for from your community if it were to become publicly known; just as much as the gambling debt or the DUI or any other hidden degenerate proclivities. But that is all clearly falling by the way side as the US system crumbles and decays from being extremely unhealthy with a kind of civilizational or at least societal and cultural cancer that has clearly metastasized at this point.

gh02t 5y ago

Yeah I asked someone in human reliability about this not too long ago, she said even if it's made legal they are unlikely to change the restrictions any time soon. She said (and I'm not commenting on the validity of this line of reasoning myself, nor was she really) the argument is along the same lines of why you're also not supposed to be routinely getting wasted drinking -- it shows a pattern of unreliable behavior and there is also a risk of disclosing information when intoxicated. She did say that they might slightly relax the restrictions if weed was made fully legal.

namlem 5y ago
Which is still incredibly unscientific. Cannabis doesn't even really lower inhibitions.
- edgyquant 5y ago
  Do you have a source for this?

frankbreetz 5y ago

If you admit to using weed in the past year, they will make you wait to get your clearance. As long as you don't have any DUIs or legal trouble from drinking you will not be restricted. Unless you say something like "I have a serious drinking problem and get blackout drunk every night" Drinking is not an issue, even people who do drink too much will consider themselves moderate drinkers, even if they are lying to themselves. So, admission to responsible weed usage and responsible alcohol usage will get different results. I have a clearance and almost all of my coworkers talked openly about drinking too much on occasion, but no one would say they touched weed

throwaway6734 5y ago
The one year thing is no longer the case based on my experience. Some friends of mine had extensive marijuana use in a legal state up to 5 months before being successfully cleared
- frankbreetz 5y ago
  They did for me about 4 years ago, they didn't explicitly state this, so it could have just been a backlog, but a lot of people got their clearance quicker during this period.
- frankfrankfrank 5y ago
  That is happening, but it is also both a function of a crumbling system and a bit of desperation of the system to hire people, whether they are necessary or not. The system does not really care about the drug use as much as it cares about whether whatever the factor, you can or cannot be manipulated because of it. The caveat of that being though that the system used to function on that basis, something that I am increasingly witnessing is no longer the case. What we are really living through right now is a kind of civilizational event horizon where, e.g., one society/culture has no remaining knowledge of what something really was for or how it was really used or what systems created it, even as they still use or worship it or perform certain rituals simply out of repetition and custom. A rather good example of this process is the whole "space race" where the Germans pioneered space travel technology, which ended in a kind of collapse of the whole knowledge base to the point that the USA was hitching a ride on Russian rockets just to get to an aging space station, and where space travel had to essentially be rediscovered by SpaceX, etc. I don't think people quite understand what happened in that 1955-2010 period where the "advanced society" of today stumbled upon the ancient technology of the 1955-1960s when men with straight edges and graphing paper put men on the moon and brought them back home and couldn't figure out how exactly they did it … something that has still not been replicated.
dahfizz 5y ago
This goes a bit beyond just cultural taboo. A breathalyzer test can determine if you are under the influence of alcohol _at this moment_. No such test exists for weed. The only way to prove someone is not high is to do the usual urine test, which returns positive if you've smoked at all in the past ~month. It's a liability thing. If a "weed breathalyzer" is invented and employers can prove that you are sober when reporting to work, I think smoking in the evening will become much less of an issue.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

frankfrankfrank 5y ago

It goes far beyond just "because you are using drugs" … it is a national security or any security risk for someone to be dependent and pliable, not only on or by drugs. I was going to make this a long explanation, but it can easily be summed up by if you can be manipulated by it, then the system will deem it a threat because you are a weak point. That means the affair you did not confess to your wife or that you fear ostracism for from your community if it were to become publicly known; just as much as the gambling debt or the DUI or any other hidden degenerate proclivities. But that is all clearly falling by the way side as the US system crumbles and decays from being extremely unhealthy with a kind of civilizational or at least societal and cultural cancer that has clearly metastasized at this point.