_eo94's comments

Asking for a friend: what should you do if you were a legal firearm owner before moving to an area with medicinal cannabis and then got your card? Sure don’t do it in the first place, but what options should so recommend to my friend in order to keep them out of trouble? Also, does the ATF trawl through state cannabis records to cross-reference gun owners?

Investigators are required to find “derogatory information”. I wasn’t an investigator myself but knew some people who did it as contractors. They said they couldn’t turn in a package for adjudication without something negative. Weed was usually the check in the box for that, but if it wasn’t then they had to dig to find something else.

My recruiter told me I had to fill out a pre-screening questionnaire. He said “I need all these answers to be NO at the end of this form if you want to join the military”

“So you want me to mark No for all the answers?”

“No. No. That’s not what I said. You should answer all questions with the proper answers. All I’m saying is I need these questions to be NO if we want to proceed”

I read between the lines and everything was no. When I went to MEPS, a processing stop where you get physically and mentally cleared to join, he told me to not admit to smoking weed. When we got into the room at MEPS, they said if you used drugs and we find out and you didn’t tell us, you can go to jail for 10 years, etc., so I raised my hand and told on myself. The whole drive home my recruiter was like “why didn’t you just say no?”

When I eventually got to my first command, an investigator came to speak with me about my pending clearance. She said they found some discrepancies, I told her the recruiting story. She asked if I’d be willing to take a polygraph. I initially accepted but then asked if I was required to. I wasn’t and if I didn’t want to do a polygraph I could instead do a sworn statement which I did. Eventually got my clearance but it took a long time.