[robotresearcher]

The traditional explanation is that drug users can be blackmailed and security compromised by adversaries threatening to reveal federally prohibited behavior.

It seems antiquated.

Edit: as cannabis use is transitioning to decriminalized, testing specifically for that will become antiquated. Standing crimes of course will remain leverage for bad guys.

[gpm]

Eh, I buy that "habitually committing crimes" makes it easier for adversaries to blackmail you. Seems like evergreen logic that doesn't get antiquated.

[matthewdgreen]

It's an evergreen that can be easily repaired by eliminating silly categories of crime and social conventions. See e.g., the old restrictions on allowing gay people to hold security clearances, which stemmed from the fact that it was easy to blackmail gay people in a society that (foolishly) kept penalizing people for being gay. We lost Alan Turing because of stupid crap like that, god only knows what else we lost.

[dragonwriter]

> See e.g., the old restrictions on allowing gay people to hold security clearances, which stemmed from the fact that it was easy to blackmail gay people

AFAIK, they did not stem from that fact, that was a later rationalization from keeping them around. They stemmed from the fact that being gay was seen as a serious moral failing in its own right, and indicative of propensity for other moral failings.