Earlier this year, Congress gave the FBI permission to hire about 2,000 additional personnel, most of whom would focus on cyber crimes. But if the agency plans to fill these hacker-like positions, it may first have to change its no-tolerance drug policy.
As evidenced by Monday’s announcement that the Justice Department has charged five Chinese military officials with hacking, FBI Director James Comey has made combating cyber crime a priority for the agency. But even Comey recognizes that many of the hackers that could be an asset to the FBI like to smoke marijuana or have used the drug in the past three years, which is completely unacceptable under the FBI’s current policy.
Given that marijuana has been legalized for medicinal use in 21 states and Washington, D.C., and entirely legalized in two states — Colorado and Washington — there have been calls for a renewed discussion on whether federal employees should be allowed to use the substance.
As marijuana is considered a Schedule 1 drug and has no medicinal value whatsoever, according to the federal government, federal employees are currently prohibited from using the drug, even if they live in a state that has legalized the substance in some capacity.
Comey is now working to change that, since he says he realizes that some of the top computer programmers and hacking gurus in the U.S. are fond of marijuana.
“I have to hire a great workforce to compete with those cyber criminals, and some of those kids want to smoke weed on the way to the interview,” Comey said.
How exactly the agency plans to remedy the situation is not yet known, as Comey said the agency is currently “grappling with the question right now” of how to amend the agency’s marijuana-related policies.
Current policy states that anyone who has smoked marijuana in the past three years will not be considered for employment by the FBI, but Comey said the agency has “changed both our mindset and the way we do business,” and now works less “in-box” than it used to, which is why the agency is open to changing the policy.
During a recent conference in New York City, an attendee told Comey that a friend had considered applying to work with the FBI but opted not to because of agency’s marijuana policy. “He should go ahead and apply” anyway, Comey said.