FBI Bows to Modern Realities, Eases Rules on Past Drug Use

Longtime FBI director J.Edgar Hoover warned that smoking marijuana would embolden users into committing criminal acts. (Associated Press)

"Someone who was actually an addict is probably not going to satisfy our needs," Berkin said. "Our standards are still very high. The level of drug history would still have to be something that we would characterize as experimental."

Mark A. de Bernardo, executive director of the Institute for a Drug-Free Workplace, a nonprofit group, said he applauds the FBI for dropping its numerical measures, in part because such requirements could run afoul of disability discrimination laws.

"Someone who may have engaged in illicit drug use 20 years ago -- to say that person can never work at the FBI, that they can never be rehabilitated, would be not only inappropriate but possibly illegal," de Bernardo said. "I don't think this is sending a weaker message; I think the message can be just as strong, which is that we expect you to be drug-free."

Under the FBI's previous policy, many job applicants who, for example, had experimented with marijuana in college often had difficulty recalling precisely how many times they may have used the drug, according to FBI officials and others. Even the definition of what constituted a single use -- one joint? a whole night of partying? -- was open to debate.

"We found it was difficult to draw a meaningful distinction between, for example, 15 uses of marijuana or 16 uses," Berkin said. "It was very arbitrary."

Such uncertainty frequently led to problems on polygraph tests, which the FBI administers to all new employees. You cannot be hired if you are deemed to have failed the polygraph test.

"It was the drug question that was tripping up the most people," said Mark S. Zaid, a Washington defense lawyer who handles many employment disputes involving the FBI and other intelligence agencies. "They realize they were losing good people."

Bruce Mirken, communications director for the Marijuana Policy Project, which advocates looser restrictions on marijuana use, called the policy change "a small step towards sanity" by the FBI.

"What it really does reflect is a reality that lots and lots of people in this society have used marijuana -- some of them have used it a fair amount -- and have gone on to become capable and effective citizens," Mirken said. "Are we really going to stop all those folks from serving our country?"

Rafael Lemaitre, a spokesman for the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy, said there is no set standard governing past drug use for prospective federal employees. But Lemaitre and others said the FBI's new policy reflects a broader trend.

"Increasingly, this is less about someone who smoked pot a couple times when they were a kid in college and more about 'Do you have a drug problem now and are you lying about it now?' " Lemaitre said. "That's the shift you're seeing in both the private and public sectors."

Staff researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.