Public safety agencies around the country are having a hard time hiring police officers and firefighters. There are lots of reasons behind the struggle to hire, but the legalization of cannabis in some states — while it remains illegal at the federal level — has been sited as one of the impediments.
This week, Prince George’s County Council member Krystal Oriadha proposed a bill to change that.
The bill would make it so past cannabis use can’t be held against applicants during the initial recruiting process for the county’s public safety agencies.
“We know the law is changing, so we really need to keep up with the new law and create a space where we’re not automatically making people disqualified for working in public safety,” Oriadha said.
“There’s still nuances where if you talk about the use of cannabis, you’re disqualified,” she added.
Neither the Prince George’s County Police nor Fire and EMS Department had much to say about her idea. However, in the past, it has been expressed that drug use has made it harder for public safety agencies to fill positions not just for police officers, but also crossing guards.
Oriadha said under her bill, if you’re already going through the academy process or working in public safety, using cannabis could still cost you your job.
“Those factors are still in place,” she said, acknowledging that cannabis can linger in your system for days or weeks after using it, making it hard to determine whether or not you were under the influence at the time of a test. “But the issue we’re seeing is that it’s being a disqualifying factor for people getting the job.”
She believes it’s time for the law to catch up with reality.
“We know we have a younger generation,” she argued. “This is something that’s not going away, so we have to understand, how can we make sure that the young people of this generation have opportunity to be law enforcement?”
“It’s important that we think about all of the things we can do to help recruit new officers,” she added. “I think it’s a barrier and something we can easily fix.”
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