[theboss]

I mean...there are plenty of really good people who don't smoke marijuana too, and they do an exceptional job recruiting them from schools in the DMV area.

At the University I went to, anyone who expressed interest in security and had good grades could get a ridiculously generous scholarship (tuition + $20k stipend + books + $1000 for conferences, and a guaranteed summer internship). A catch to this is you must be able to get a clearance, and if your clearance is denied you lose the scholarship and have to pay back the money.

Basically, all the students who were not into that kind of stuff went straight for it and had jobs at 3 letter agencies on graduation.

Yeah a lot of security people like marijuana but a lot of them don't.

The way I looked at it was "If I'm going to choose to smoke marijuana I have to be twice as good as everyone else in order to ensure I get a job that does not require a security clearance" (which is odd because I later chose not to smoke marijuana).

But...there are plenty out there who already have no problem getting jobs at these agencies after being clean for 1year or just not being interested in those things.