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DEA Filing Defends Firing ‘Outstanding’ Special Agent for Using CBD

35 points by coloneltcb 3y ago

gustavus 3y ago
The DEA whose motto is "At least we aren't as bad as the ATF"
wing-_-nuts 3y ago
Wild that one can be fired for taking a legal substance with no known impairing qualities. I also find it ironic that one can be fired for failing drug tests for using cannabis in 'legal' states despite that a positive test only shows that you used the substance sometime in the past few days or even up to a month. If it ever gets legalized nationally, this will have to be dealt with. I cannot imagine an employer firing someone for using alcohol or tobacco for example
- jvanderbot 3y ago
  Presumably the employee should have known about a blanket "no drug / marijuana" policy. Yes, the policy will need to be updated, but there's really no excuse.
  - nickthegreek 3y ago
    CBD is not THC.
    - jvanderbot 3y ago
      I agree. But the distinction is very likely not made at the policy level for this agency. In past jobs, it was "all the same" when dealing with zero tolerance policies.
    - alwa 3y ago
      True! But he wasn’t penalized for the CBD in his body, he was penalized for the THC metabolites.
- mikestew 3y ago
  I cannot imagine an employer firing someone for using...tobacco Alaska Airlines will do just that. Source: any of their job postings, as they won't even hire tobacco users. But if they find out after hiring, you can guess the probable outcome.
  - pdntspa 3y ago
    My last employer required us to sign an affidavit confirming that we don't use tobacco, or we would have to pay a penalty on the company-provided insurance
  - wing-_-nuts 3y ago
    At least with tobacco one could say there's a negative health risk that raises the cost for everyone. Firing someone for using CBD is literally just being petty.
- glerk 3y ago
  It’s the DEA, so this is more like a priest getting fired from a church for not following the dogmas.
  - hyperhopper 3y ago
    What you do on your own time should be none of your employers business. You do your job, that's it. They don't own your life.
    - wand3r 3y ago
      I totally disagree in this context. CBD is probably beyond the pale here, but positions of extreme authority should certainly be held to higher levels of scrutiny. Judges and Police are entrusted with an huge amount of power in our society so if they break a law they should have higher sentences. They themselves enforce and judge criminals. They don't get to "own your life" but I don't feel its unreasonable to hold them to a standard higher than the average citizen in our society.
    - alwa 3y ago
      Perhaps—but if your job is to enforce the laws about what other people do on their own time, it seems like a reasonable prerequisite that you should behave spotlessly on your own time too. At the very least, he knew the stakes well ahead of time, and he knew it was his responsibility to make sure he didn’t get THC in his blood. As a drug cop, it would be strange for him not to understand that hemp products still contain some amount of THC. And although the firing decision only relied on the drug test, the evidence shows that he did in fact procure and use “CBD” products that were above the legal limit for THC content—and thus broke the laws it’s his job to enforce. “I swear, officer, I didn’t know what it was!” doesn’t work for anybody else, so I have a hard time accepting that it should work for the elite cop whose job it is to know better.
    - ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
      their agency is tasked with, among other things, prosecuting people for possessing and using a substance which is harmless, but still disallowed by bureaucrats the dude was fired for possessing and using a substance which is harmless, but still disallowed by bureaucrats
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
dr_orpheus 3y ago
For some context, I think some of the key legal points in here was that the he was fired because urinary analysis showed THC metabolites in his blood from the small amount of THC in the CBD. Part of the legal reasoning is that he knew the risk: "Mr Armour understood...that CBD products containing no more than 0.3 percent of THC are legal hemp [and not marijuana]" However, it looks like one of the CBD products he used were advertised as below the legal limit was not. But part of the problem identified is that the law identifies a threshold but not necessarily a required confidence against that threshold because it was close. "Mr Armour provided what remained of the three CBD products and asked them to be tested...DEA's chemical analysis showed that two CBD products were legal...chemical analysis of [the third CBD product] measured THC above the 0.3 percent legal limit, even though that analysis was unable to establish whether THC was above the legal limit to a scientific degree of certainty with 95 percent confidence" It also says that he assumed the risk because "he also understood that the FDA does not regulate CBD products". So from the legal analysis there are two interesting points to me 1. He can argue that all of the CBD products he took were below the legal limit within a margin of error (burden of proof and all that) 2. Since he took legal products (assuming #1 holds) that the threshold for the urinary analysis is incorrect. But I'm also not sure where the line is if you can take enough of a legal substance to violate a limit. For example, what if I drank enough orange juice (ABV in the ~0.2-~0.7% range) to get above a DUI limit? I assume I'm still legally culpable. What is the recourse though if somebody dumped some vodka in my orange juice before I bought from the store. There's certainly some recourse against the orange juice supplier since it is a controlled substance. More of an interesting thought experiment, playing devils advocate here. Maybe this will actually spark something in changing definitions though. When I got my security clearance they basically said "we don't want to deal with the legal distinction between CBD products and marijuana products, so just don't touch any of it"

35 points by coloneltcb 3y ago

The DEA whose motto is "At least we aren't as bad as the ATF"

Wild that one can be fired for taking a legal substance with no known impairing qualities. I also find it ironic that one can be fired for failing drug tests for using cannabis in 'legal' states despite that a positive test only shows that you used the substance sometime in the past few days or even up to a month. If it ever gets legalized nationally, this will have to be dealt with. I cannot imagine an employer firing someone for using alcohol or tobacco for example

jvanderbot 3y ago
Presumably the employee should have known about a blanket "no drug / marijuana" policy. Yes, the policy will need to be updated, but there's really no excuse.
- nickthegreek 3y ago
  CBD is not THC.
  - jvanderbot 3y ago
    I agree. But the distinction is very likely not made at the policy level for this agency. In past jobs, it was "all the same" when dealing with zero tolerance policies.
  - alwa 3y ago
    True! But he wasn’t penalized for the CBD in his body, he was penalized for the THC metabolites.
mikestew 3y ago
I cannot imagine an employer firing someone for using...tobacco Alaska Airlines will do just that. Source: any of their job postings, as they won't even hire tobacco users. But if they find out after hiring, you can guess the probable outcome.
- pdntspa 3y ago
  My last employer required us to sign an affidavit confirming that we don't use tobacco, or we would have to pay a penalty on the company-provided insurance
- wing-_-nuts 3y ago
  At least with tobacco one could say there's a negative health risk that raises the cost for everyone. Firing someone for using CBD is literally just being petty.
glerk 3y ago
It’s the DEA, so this is more like a priest getting fired from a church for not following the dogmas.
- hyperhopper 3y ago
  What you do on your own time should be none of your employers business. You do your job, that's it. They don't own your life.
  - wand3r 3y ago
    I totally disagree in this context. CBD is probably beyond the pale here, but positions of extreme authority should certainly be held to higher levels of scrutiny. Judges and Police are entrusted with an huge amount of power in our society so if they break a law they should have higher sentences. They themselves enforce and judge criminals. They don't get to "own your life" but I don't feel its unreasonable to hold them to a standard higher than the average citizen in our society.
  - alwa 3y ago
    Perhaps—but if your job is to enforce the laws about what other people do on their own time, it seems like a reasonable prerequisite that you should behave spotlessly on your own time too. At the very least, he knew the stakes well ahead of time, and he knew it was his responsibility to make sure he didn’t get THC in his blood. As a drug cop, it would be strange for him not to understand that hemp products still contain some amount of THC. And although the firing decision only relied on the drug test, the evidence shows that he did in fact procure and use “CBD” products that were above the legal limit for THC content—and thus broke the laws it’s his job to enforce. “I swear, officer, I didn’t know what it was!” doesn’t work for anybody else, so I have a hard time accepting that it should work for the elite cop whose job it is to know better.
  - ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
    their agency is tasked with, among other things, prosecuting people for possessing and using a substance which is harmless, but still disallowed by bureaucrats the dude was fired for possessing and using a substance which is harmless, but still disallowed by bureaucrats
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

dr_orpheus 3y ago

For some context, I think some of the key legal points in here was that the he was fired because urinary analysis showed THC metabolites in his blood from the small amount of THC in the CBD. Part of the legal reasoning is that he knew the risk: "Mr Armour understood...that CBD products containing no more than 0.3 percent of THC are legal hemp [and not marijuana]" However, it looks like one of the CBD products he used were advertised as below the legal limit was not. But part of the problem identified is that the law identifies a threshold but not necessarily a required confidence against that threshold because it was close. "Mr Armour provided what remained of the three CBD products and asked them to be tested...DEA's chemical analysis showed that two CBD products were legal...chemical analysis of [the third CBD product] measured THC above the 0.3 percent legal limit, even though that analysis was unable to establish whether THC was above the legal limit to a scientific degree of certainty with 95 percent confidence" It also says that he assumed the risk because "he also understood that the FDA does not regulate CBD products". So from the legal analysis there are two interesting points to me 1. He can argue that all of the CBD products he took were below the legal limit within a margin of error (burden of proof and all that) 2. Since he took legal products (assuming #1 holds) that the threshold for the urinary analysis is incorrect. But I'm also not sure where the line is if you can take enough of a legal substance to violate a limit. For example, what if I drank enough orange juice (ABV in the ~0.2-~0.7% range) to get above a DUI limit? I assume I'm still legally culpable. What is the recourse though if somebody dumped some vodka in my orange juice before I bought from the store. There's certainly some recourse against the orange juice supplier since it is a controlled substance. More of an interesting thought experiment, playing devils advocate here. Maybe this will actually spark something in changing definitions though. When I got my security clearance they basically said "we don't want to deal with the legal distinction between CBD products and marijuana products, so just don't touch any of it"