Marijuana may be legal in your state, but if you partake, you can't work for the government.
Katherine Archuleta, the Executive Director of the Office of Personal Management, recently sent notice to the heads of every federal agency announcing a policy under which any federal employee who uses marijuana, or even possesses it for a sick child off duty, is not suited to work for the federal government. This policy remains in place even if the employee resides in a state where such use is legal under state law.
The Office of Personnel Management, or OPM, is essentially the human resources department for the 4.1 million federal employees. Under the detailed guidance issued by Archuleta, even off-the-job, state-sanctioned doctor-supervised marijuana use by federal employees adversely impacts the efficiency, credibility, and productivity of the federal government. The letter relied heavily on an executive order from 1986, signed by President Reagan, calling for a Drug Free Federal Work Place. That executive order’s number one concern: funding cartels. Hard to see the direct relevance to the state taxed and regulated systems at issue.
The guidance from Archuleta was unusually detailed. It explained disciplinary procedures and clearly declared that a federal employee is unfit for their job if they use marijuana for any reason, at any place, or at any time. The letter firmly plants the government on the wrong side of history.
I myself am a federal employee of almost 10 years. I’ve also been researching and advocating for reasonable marijuana policy since I was in law school. What I've learned in that time is that lots of wonderfully successful, productive, creative, responsible adults consume marijuana. Support nationwide for medical use of marijuana regularly polls above 80 percent. It turns out that the war on drugs, and its largest component, the prohibition of marijuana, is really terrible for American families, communities, and democracy.
The U.S. spends $3.6 billion a year on marijuana prohibition and it has been a total failure; over 40 years neither demand nor supply has been reduced. Instead, success is measured by the number of people arrested, which is more than one per minute, and more than all violent crimes combined. We spend far more building prisons than schools and on prisoners than students. Our prisons are bursting: 1 in 28 kids has a parent in jail and the US holds 1 in 3 of the world’s incarcerated women. And while prohibition hasn’t stopped anyone from using marijuana—nearly half of the country tries it—the untenable federal definition of marijuana as an exceptionally dangerous drug with no medical value, has virtually eliminated opportunities for scientific research. We are left without the information we need to make smart choices as citizens and government. In fact, scientists sometimes seem like the only ones who struggle to access pot.
Marijuana prohibition is unquestionably based in unscientific propaganda. So why, when the paradigm is clearly shifting, spend so much effort to double down on policies that cannot be justified in science, reason, or justice? I am all for improving the efficiency and reputation of the federal government. It would make my life easier! But shouldn’t we look at actual productivity, impairment, capabilities, and effort? OPM’s approach is the equivalent to firing anyone who ever broke the law by exceeding the speed limit.
Meanwhile, if you are wondering why OPM and Katherine Archuleta sounds familiar, maybe it is because while she was busy digging up an outdated executive order from the failed drug war, hackers were steeling the social security, addresses, names, and 127 page security background checks for every single federal employee right under Katherine Archuleta’s watch. In fact, the news reports keep getting worse. OPM was under the worst hack in history, it did not detect the breach and it affected every single federal employee and an additional 10 million people? Fail.
There is a connection here. Last May, FBI Director James Comey said that the OPM policy against hiring anyone who has smoked marijuana in the last five years has crippled our ability to prepare for cyber-attacks. He said all the best candidates are disqualified by this policy. In April of this year, Representative Gerry Connolly of Virginia offered an amendment that would require a congressional report on how marijuana’s status as a Schedule 1 drug is affecting our nation’s security, specifically whether it disqualifies the most efficient, productive, and suitable candidates. As a Schedule 1 drug, marijuana is officially defined as having no medical uses, a high potential for abuse and being too dangerous for use even in a hospital under a doctor’s supervision.
In the face of these recurring concerns and mainstream support for marijuana law reform across the country, Katherine Archuleta spent resources calling for good people, who are good at their jobs, to be fired under the banner of the morally expired, criminal marijuana prohibition. Archuleta perpetuated the injustice of the drug war despite a conspicuous lack of any evidence to suggest that responsible, off-duty, marijuana use negatively affects job performance. At the same time, the country’s largest employer failed to notice it was the target of the largest data breach in history. Archuleta was too worried about what federal employees do in the privacy of their own homes to realize that her flat-Earth priorities actually contribute to our government’s vulnerability to defend against data breaches and deter cyber attacks.
Is perpetuating marijuana prohibition worth sacrificing national security? Of course not. When will the government recover from reefer madness? Probably not while Archuleta is in charge.
