The Congressional Budget Office projects that a bill protecting people from being denied federal security clearances or jobs because of past marijuana use will have “negligible costs” for the government. This is largely due to analysts stating that provisions on reviewing previous denials are unlikely to be implemented under current federal records-keeping policies.
In September, the House Oversight and Accountability Committee approved the bipartisan legislation of Reps. Jamie Raskin and Nancy Mace.
The amended Cannabis Users’ Restoration of Eligibility Act (CURE) would, in general, prevent federal employment and security clearance denials based on a person’s previous cannabis use. The original version would have also applied to marijuana consumption currently, but those provisions were removed by the committee.
The CBO’s analyses focused primarily on the provisions of the bill which would require agencies to, within one-year of its enactment create a review process for each decision made by agencies to deny security clearances and job opportunities due to cannabis use dating back to January 1, 2008
The current law allows for “records relating to personnel eligibility and clearance determinations to be designated as temporary documents and destroyed after a brief period,” the report said.
The report states that “the General Records Schedule” directs the destruction of most files relating to individuals who have not been granted security clearances after a year. The CBO believes that agencies will decide how long to keep personnel eligibility records.
CBO said that “for these reasons, CBO anticipates that most agencies will have limited capability to determine the reasons for disqualifications of job and clearance candidates in previous years.”
H.R. 5040, CURE Act https://t.co/pCRTxdBLq7
CBO Cost Estimates February 23, 2020
The office stated, that the costs associated with implementing this modest reform would depend on the specific policies of each agency in regards to the record-keeping for applications for security clearances. In all likelihood, records for the last year or two are available for review. This means that the requirement in the bill for an assessment dating back to 2008 is likely to be moot.
The costs associated with implementing this bill will depend on the extent of each agency’s process. CBO estimates the cost of implementing H.R. The cost of implementing H.R. “Any expenditure would be dependent on the availability of funds.”
Raskin, who sponsored the bill, told Marijuana Moment he was “delighted” to learn that CBO found that “the bill will cost taxpayers practically nothing, while ensuring qualified Americans will be allowed to serve in the federal government and receive their security clearances, without being hindered by outdated marijuana laws.”
The CURE Act, he explained, will help thousands of job applicants get the jobs and clearances that they deserve.
Before the committee amendment was made, the retroactive review section would also have required agencies maintain a website where people could request an appeal of a decision in their case. They would also have been required to “reconsider the security clearance or application of such individual” within 90-days if they found that they had been denied based on marijuana use only.
These components were eventually removed by the amendment proposed by the chairman of the committee, Rep. James Comer.
Rep. Robert Garcia, D-CA, who championed a number appropriations amendments to prohibit marijuana testing for federal job applicants last year said at the hearing in September that the CURE Act was “just one step that we need to update all of our drugs laws.”
The CURE Act is an expansion of the amendment Raskin submitted as part of the House’s cannabis legalization bill passed in 2022. The measure that Raskin filed would only have covered security clearances, not also including employment decisions. Retroactivity would have meant that denials from 1971 and earlier, rather than 2008, were reviewed. was narrowly defeated in the House .
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In July of last year, the Senate passed legislation to prevent intelligence agencies from refusing security clearances solely based on applicants’ past marijuana use.
In 2022, Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon filed a more comprehensive amendment that would have prohibited employment discrimination on the basis of cannabis use in any federal department. This included those who deal with intelligence. The provision was weakened by a second-degree amendment proposed by the chairman of the panel before it was adopted by the committee. The reform was quashed after two GOP senators refused to attach to the National Defense Authorization Act on the floor if the bill included marijuana language.
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