[Jiro]

>if you're caught with drugs, we slap you with a felony that ensures you can't get a real job... pushing you right back to drugs.

I could say the same thing for any sort of crime. If you're an accountant, and you get put in jail for embezzling, that conviction is going to prevent you from getting another job as an accountant.

While there have been a few controversies about jobs that the law excludes felons from, in a lot of cases there's nothing preventing you from hiring a felony drug criminal. If you personally are fine with drugs and you think that committing the crime doesn't make him a danger to your business, go ahead and hire him. If you won't, it isn't the conviction that's keeping him from being hired, it's the crime; the conviction just lets you know that he committed a crime.

[radlad]

Your last paragraph and comment down-thread I think discounts both the many ways the legal system and drug use are entangled, and the reality of how job hiring works.

It has been my anecdotal observation that it is more common for small, local businesses to "look past" prior convictions when hiring and be more willing to take chances on their neighbors.

Large corporations with big HR and legal departments typically have a dimmer view of things however.

Right or wrong, it is harder to get a job with a past conviction. Without a job, it is difficult to earn a living, feed and house yourself and your family. When people are desperate and unable to survive through legal means, they resort to whatever it takes to survival. It's human nature.

[anigbrowl]

What a weird comparison. Embezzling is abusing a position of trust to become a thief. Who was abused if someone privately consumed drugs?

[Jiro]

If you believe that privately consuming drugs doesn't reflect negatively on someone, you can hire them. If you don't hire them and nobody else hires them either, the drug use is keeping them from being hired. It's misleading to claim that the conviction keeps them from being hired rather than the drug use.

[radlad]

> It's misleading to claim that the conviction keeps them from being hired rather than the drug use.

If I'm understanding you correctly, you're arguing that a drug user is less employable (perhaps because you believe drug users are untrustworthy or unreliable), and this is the reason they aren't hired.

But a conviction for a drug crime years ago does not mean someone is a drug user today. It is the conviction, not drug use, keeping them from being hired. A drug test would make more sense if you want to determine whether someone is a current drug user.

And besides, without the conviction you may be unaware of their drug use. If someone has a drug habit, but nobody can tell, what exactly is the problem? There are plenty of "functioning alcoholics" in the workforce.

[anigbrowl]

That's nonsense. If you have a private drug habit and don't get caught, that won't come up on a background check. Lots of people consume recreationally without being addicts or messing up the rest of their lives. A conviction (sometimes just an arrest record) that comes up on a background check will automatically put applicants in the reject pile in many jobs. This is such a common problem some US states (eg California) have passed laws to prevent employers demanding this information of applicants.