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30 Lawmakers Urge Biden Personnel Rule Change After Daily Beast Marijuana Story

The members of Congress wrote they were “dismayed to learn” about the action taken against staffers who had previously used marijuana.

Thirty members of Congress signed a letter urging President Joe Biden’s White House to overhaul its personnel practices in light of reporting from The Daily Beast that dozens of White House staffers were suspended, forced to resign, or work remotely as a result of their prior use of marijuana. In a letter to Biden spearheaded by Reps. Earl Blumenauer, founder of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus, Don Beyer, Jared Huffman, Mondaire Jones, and Barbara Lee, the reps wrote that they were “dismayed to learn” about the action taken against staffers who had previously used marijuana and asked Biden to “clarify your employment suitability policies, remove past cannabis use as a potential disqualifier, and apply these policies with consistency and fairness.”

The lawmakers praised the Biden administration for its announcement that prior marijuana use would not be treated as an automatic disqualifier for White House service and evaluate usage on a case-by-case basis. But the letter says marijuana-usage policies “have been applied in inconsistent and unfair ways” and noted that senior administration officials like Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg have admitted to previous marijuana use while junior staffers with similar pasts face greater hurdles in obtaining administration jobs.

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Adam RawnsleyFormer Senior Researcher

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