When is prior drug use OK in a post-Obama world?

[Ping898]

The key here is that you have no issues because you've been lucky enough that all of your acts of stupidity happen to have been things that your employers have either not asked about or not cared about. At some point, that might change and then... you WOULD have issues.

You are correct that I am lucky and they don't care about my acts of stupidity. No where in anything I've said have I implied that I am perfect or have made no mistakes or implied the laws I broke were ok. What I said and I adhere to, is I have accepted the consequences related to my actions, every ticket and fine, for anything I have done. I also accept that tomorrow if someone I work for says, I will no longer employ anyone who has gotten a speeding ticket, then I will look to find a new employer. It'll suck for sure, and I won't be happy about it, but there are consequences to anything you do and sometimes you don't know what they are or will be until years have gone by as this Marine is now finding out.

But sometimes our legal system gets out of synch with changing social mores. Sometimes "the consequences" no longer fit the illegal act. Imagine a year in jail fo jaywalking or capital punishment for a dui. Or, returning to the real world... some of our drug laws today. Many would say that the laws need changing... and in time I think they will get changed.

I agree, but also think that until the laws change you shouldn't expect special treatment just cause it was something that happened in the past, and in this instance compared to the stick that all are held too (or should be held to) to get into the Marshals service letting this marine in would be giving him special treatment

I don't think this means that the laws maybe shouldn't be changed or even that maybe the standards within the Marshals and elsewhere in the federal government need to be changed to accommodate past acts that have no current bearing on the current situation, but I don't know what the line is, is 1 year long enough, 5, 10?....what happens if you make it 10 and then a marine in the same situation comes along and his transgressions were at 9 years? does it get changed then? The reality of it is that we are not there at this point, and I still go back to, I don't have a problem with this man being rejected because of past recreational drug use.

 

[Steve]

You are correct that I am lucky and they don't care about my acts of stupidity. No where in anything I've said have I implied that I am perfect or have made no mistakes or implied the laws I broke were ok. What I said and I adhere to, is I have accepted the consequences related to my actions, every ticket and fine, for anything I have done. I also accept that tomorrow if someone I work for says, I will no longer employ anyone who has gotten a speeding ticket, then I will look to find a new employer. It'll suck for sure, and I won't be happy about it, but there are consequences to anything you do and sometimes you don't know what they are or will be until years have gone by as this Marine is now finding out.

I sincerely hope it doesn't happen to you, but should it ever happen, I will be among those who would call BS on it just as I do now for what happened to this guy.

 

[Gordon Nore]

I think disqualifying someone for a job based on having Touched the Great Taboo is wrong. Lotta hypocrisy woven into the fabric of the War on Drugs.

I don't find fault in Obama for having tried used pot — and like that he doesn't deny or downplay it like Bush and Clinton.

By the time Senator Obama answered "the question" about pot, times, as Bill suggested above, had changed. It had been the better part of 20 years since Governor Clinton was asked the same question. The optics were also different: Clinton had been of age to serve in Vietnam but did not. Admitting to using herb came with the risk of being labeled a draft-dodging, pot-smoking, hippie pinko type.

Obama was far too young to have served in Vietnam and thus couldn't be cast as a draft-dodger because the draft had been eliminated when he was a teen. He was also smart enough to know, like Clinton, that if he lied about drug use, someone would appear from his past to set the record straight.

Admission of past experimentation with drugs does not carry the social stigma that it once did. I think that's the point of Bill's thread -- Why is an apparently accomplished young man with a record of service paying a price for (1) a youthful indiscretion and (2) an indiscretion which so many people see as so minor, it didn't keep a African-American Democrat from becoming Commander in Chief?

Someone pointed out above, "Illegal is illegal," and that's never been in dispute. People do illegal things all the time that they are never asked about and thus could never seriously impede their careers. Why is this issue of pot smoking still so important? The answer, I think, is that a peculiar morality is applied to the use of certain substances, but not others

Why has no one ever refused to hire me on the basis of the fact that I am a cigarette smoker? Realistically, I'm a bigger risk (health problems, time off work, lost productivity) than some guy who tried pot in high school.