Should getting high prevent you from getting hired? (RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post)

Should getting high stop you from getting hired at the FBI or elsewhere?

By The Cannabist Staff

FBI director James Comey made headlines two weeks ago when he half-joked about relaxing the bureau’s drug-testing policy in order to attract the nation’s brightest applicants — a comment he made in reference to the Congress-approved 2,000 new jobs the FBI will be filling in 2014.

“A lot of the nation’s top computer programmers and hacking gurus are also fond of marijuana,” Comey told the White Collar Crime Institute according to the Wall Street Journal. “I have to hire a great work force to compete with those cyber criminals and some of those kids want to smoke weed on the way to the interview.”


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A few days later Comey had to answer to a concerned Senate panel accusing him of “dismissing the seriousness of marijuana use:” “I waxed philosophic and funny to say, look, one of our challenges that we face is getting a good workforce at the same time when young people’s attitudes about marijuana and our states’ attitudes about marijuana are leading more and more of them to try it,” Comey said. “I am absolutely dead set against using marijuana. I don’t want young people to use marijuana. It’s against the law. We have a three-year ban on marijuana. I did not say that I’m going to change that ban. I said I have to grapple with the change in my workforce.”

Cannabist editor Ricardo Baca joined “Tell Me More” host Michel Martin on NPR on June 2 to talk about the FBI director’s comments, at least one Colorado CEO that allows his programmers to get high while at work and a high-profile case being taken on by the Colorado State Supreme Court.

Listen to the segment here: