“The end result is as follows: of the hundreds of people hired, only five people who started working at the White House are no longer employed as a result of this policy,” she wrote in a two-part message on Twitter.
Several officials told the vehicle that the actions went against the Biden government’s promise that the drug – of which an increasing number of states, and Washington, DC, has legalized adult use – would not automatically disqualify employees from working at the White House.
Psaki emphasized the change in his statement. “As a result, more people will serve that they would not have had in the past with the same level of recent drug use,” she wrote.
Notably, his statement did not address how many people were put on probation or received other sanctions in the workplace after admitting cannabis use, as reported by the Daily Beast.
Although cannabis has become legal in more than a dozen states and social acceptance has increased for decades, recreational use of the drug remains prohibited by federal law and several agencies have rules that prevent potential employees from obtaining the necessary safety permits for certain positions if they have used the drug within a specified period.
The issue is a thorny one for a Democratic government, as the legalization of cannabis has become a major board on the party platform, even among moderates. The locations where the drug has been legalized for adult use also coincide with the locations where potential candidates live or come from, mainly from Washington, DC.
Virginia also passed legislation in late February to legalize the adult use of marijuana, although the main components of the law did not go into effect until 2024.