The White House is attempting to clear the air following reports that staffers were fired for admitting to prior marijuana use.
On Thursday, the Daily Beast and CNN reported that several White House staffers had been suspended, asked to resign, or placed on temporary remote work after admitting to past marijuana use during background checks. The report seemed to fly in the face of signals from Biden’s administration that their policies on prior cannabis use in potential employees would be loosened for those in lower-level positions.
In response to the reports, White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Friday clarified that less than half a dozen people had been disqualified from White House roles after disclosing marijuana use.
“The bottom line is this: of the hundreds of people hired, only five people who had started working at the White House are no longer employed as a result of this policy,” she said in a two-part Twitter post.
She also confirmed that administration officials “had worked with the security service to update the policies to ensure that past marijuana use wouldn’t automatically disqualify staff from serving in the White House,” saying the updated requirements still allow “more people (to) serve who would not have in the past with the same level of recent drug use.”
She did not clarify how many candidates would have been disqualified had the administration not put the new guidelines into effect.
The news of the administration’s updated policy was first reported by NBC in late February, which at the time said the White House would issue waivers on a limited basis to employees who disclosed “limited” marijuana use in their past, and only ones who did not require a security clearance.
An unnamed official told NBC that adopting the new policy would “effectively protect our national security while modernizing policies to ensure that talented and otherwise well-qualified applicants with limited marijuana use will not be barred from serving the American people.”
While the use of recreational marijuana is still a federal crime, it has been increasingly approved at state-wide levels in recent years. 15 states, plus the District of Columbia, have broadly legalized the use of recreational cannabis; voters in New Jersey, South Dakota and Montana approved making possession of recreational marijuana legal just last November.
The push to legalize marijuana has coincided, in large part, with growing calls for criminal justice reform. Numerous studies have found that enforcement of marijuana arrests disproportionately impact those in minority groups or with lower socioeconomic backgrounds. According to a report from the ACLU, Black people are over three times as likely than white people to be arrested for possession of marijuana nationwide, despite marijuana use being roughly equal between the two groups.
Spectrum News has reached out to the White House for comment.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
