FBI Struggling to Hire Computer Techs Who Don’t Smoke Marijuana

The FBI wants to hire new computer techs that have advanced skills in encryption and the prevention of foreign spy hacking. It’s the world we live in now, and law enforcement is constantly upping the ante for cyber terrorism prevention (all while the NSA spies on its own citizens, of course). However, the FBI faces a significant problem finding qualified personnel. It isn’t because they can’t find individuals who are skilled in this digital age, but surprisingly, they can’t find people who don’t smoke marijuana.

Wall Street Journal reported that “FBI Director James B. Comey said Monday that if the FBI hopes to continue to keep pace with cyber criminals, the organization may have to loosen up its no-tolerance policy for hiring those who like to smoke marijuana.”

Congress has given the FBI a green light to hire an additional 20,000 employees whose express job will to be take down hackers, but  “a lot of the nation’s top computer programmers and hacking gurus are also fond of marijuana.”

This is problematic for the FBI. With their current rules, they aren’t allowed to hire anyone who has smoked in the past three years. Comey stated, “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.”

The slow-creep of medical marijuana acceptance across the nation is continuously being turned up a notch. While the FBI is changing rules on hiring pro-drug, competent techies, the U.S. Treasury issued guidelines to banks making it legal for them to provide services to marijuana-related businesses. Making it legal for banks to do business with marijuana vendors clears out some of the biggest hurdles to those who might want to operate a legal hemp or medical marijuana business.

It seems the Federal Investigation Bureau, who once championed the ‘war on drugs’ to a great degree, is now coming to terms with the fact that their own rules are excluding them from hiring some of the most talented technology experts. If marijuana just made you dumb and lazy, how could you be considered “some of the most talented in the industry?” It looks like the FBI should help decriminalize marijuana and take it off Schedule I, and revamp their own rules if they want to compete on a global stage.

Times – they ‘are-a-changin’.