White house terminates 5 members for consuming marijuana
After a detailed review and survey, the White house terminated members consuming marijuana. Several White House staffers were asked to resign, were suspended, or are working remotely after the revelation of past marijuana use during their background checks.
The distinguished background check forced 5 employees to place their resignation while additional staffers are working remotely. In many of the cases involving staffers who are no longer employed, additional security factors were in play, including for some hard drug use, the official said.
Though marijuana is legal in several states it’s still prohibited at the federal level which can present a hurdle in the federal security clearance process. The White House declared on Friday about relaxing some restrictions in its security clearance policy to be more lenient about employing individuals with a history of drug use.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki tweeted on Friday that the White House “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.”
“As a result, more people will serve who would not have in the past with the same level of recent drug use,” she added. “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.
Jen Psaki in a statement said, “While we will not get into individual cases, there were additional factors at play in many instances for the small number of individuals who were terminated.”
The White House is granting waivers on a limited basis, on the requirement, that employees of the Executive Office of the President should qualify for Top Secret clearance in order to get employed at the White House, a White House official said.
The official further said that the administration has been working since the transition to address issues regarding occasional marijuana use in the security clearance process, which has disproportionately affected younger employees.
