Feds Reiterate That Marijuana Use Is Still A Factor In Hiring For Government Workers ‘Despite Changes In State Laws’
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A key federal agency says that “despite changes in state laws,” marijuana use is still a factor when considering a job applicant’s eligibility for government employment—though it stressed that candidates will still be evaluated holistically.
In a notice published in the Federal Register on Wednesday, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) announced that it has finalized a rule revising the administration’s “vetting investigative and adjudicative processes for determining suitability and fitness.” That includes policies surrounding drug use.
OPM’s rule doesn’t change the existing cannabis policy for federal workers. Rather, it amends a requirement to establish evidence of “substantial rehabilitation” as a condition of employment for people who’ve used illegal drugs.
But the office also addressed a public comment that recommended exempting marijuana from consideration for that factor because of “shifts in state laws regarding marijuana usage.”
“OPM is not adopting this change,” it said, adding that the hiring factor concerning drug use “may be used by agencies to assess an individual’s illegal use of several substances, not only marijuana.”
“Also, despite changes to state laws, marijuana continues to be classified as a controlled substance under the Controlled Substances Act,” OPM said.
However, the agency also stressed that the rules don’t strictly prohibit hiring people who’ve used cannabis. The government “must apply additional considerations, as pertinent, to assess the potential for the individual, based upon their conduct, to negatively impact the integrity and efficiency of the service,” it said.
“Marijuana use, alone, is not a basis for automatically finding one unsuitable or unfit,” the notice says. “Instead, the agency or OPM must demonstrate how, considering the nature of the position, the past usage will have negative impact. This is the case with any illegal use of drugs.”
Further, OPM referenced guidance that it released at the beginning of the Biden administration in 2011 that specifically said admitting to past cannabis use should not automatically disqualify people from being employed in the federal government.
“OPM has issued guidance for agencies on how marijuana use may or may not adversely affect the integrity and efficiency of the service, thereby impacting an individual’s suitability or fitness for a position,” it said. “Adjudicators will consider the person holistically, evaluating any impact to the integrity and efficiency of the service on a case-by-case basis.”
Around the time of the issuance of that guidance, the administration also instituted a new policy of granting waivers to some White House staff who’ve used cannabis.
In recent years, lawmakers have encouraged OPM to review its marijuana-related guidance for hiring.
For example, the House Appropriations Committee this year included report language in a spending bill that called on federal agencies to continue to reconsider federal hiring guidelines related to cannabis use by applicants living in states where it’s legal.
Similar sections have advanced through committee in the past, but they’ve yet to be enacted into law.
OPM announced in 2022 that it was moving to to widen the applicant pool for qualified federal workers and recognize what it called “changing societal norms” amid the state-level legalization movement. The next year, it sought White House approval for proposed changes to federal hiring practices that would treat past marijuana use by applicants much more leniently than current policy does.
As it stands, the use of Schedule I and Schedule II drugs by federal government workers is prohibited under a 1986 executive order from then-President Ronald Reagan that established the Federal Drug-Free Workplace program. While individual agencies have adopted their own policies regarding drug use, many are rooted in the Reagan order.
Because that order defines “illegal drugs” as only those in Schedules I and II, however, some attorneys believe the Biden administration’s ongoing rescheduling proposal could lift marijuana restrictions that currently apply to all federal workers.
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The post Feds Reiterate That Marijuana Use Is Still A Factor In Hiring For Government Workers ‘Despite Changes In State Laws’ appeared first on Marijuana Moment.