I find most interesting how he is permanently banned and there is, in order to enforce this, obviously now a federal searchable record tied into his SSN noting him as a liability that should be avoided for all future secure employment.<p>This reminds me of the parallel system used by "health insurance companies". If you have some minor issue you later don't disclose on an application form, then if you do later become ill with something expensive to treat like cancer, your records are searched (held by private companies who collect this information), and your policy undergoes rescission, a form of legal annulment. A couple years ago I had some heart pains and got an EKG. It was nothing and proved to be indigestion after eating too many onions. I discussed it with the doctor and he agreed to take cash for that one and make no record of it with my name due to the risk of later being denied health care should I ever actually have heart disease for not reporting a possible preexisting condition.<p>Of course all this is only possible because of the work we engineers do for the powers that exist for profit and work the angles to make sure their systems don't provide health care and deny honest people the ability to work for law enforcement.
Not to intend to hijack this thread with a sideline, but I find it interesting that the author's problems were caused by the mushrooms he consumed in Amsterdam, at a time when doing so was presumably still legal in The Netherlands. In other words, he did nothing illegal at all.<p>I spent some time in the US as an intern at a large corporation and part of the admission procedure (on the day of arrival) was a drug test. My contract clearly stated that my employment was contingent on a negative outcome of that drug test.<p>I happen to be from The Netherlands, a country where as an adult I am allowed to smoke weed should I choose to (even though I don't). Apart from the legality of this, would they really have sent me back for doing something that is legal in my country?<p>The test would actually have detected any weed consumed up to 6 weeks in advance if I remember correctly. I got the notice perhaps 4 weeks before the test, so if I would have been a regular smoker, it would have been a quite likely outcome.<p>Can you really be held accountable for doing nothing wrong?
I hate being THAT GUY, but I can tell you with authority that the quickest way out of PLC is an Integrity Violation. The Marine Corps will work with you on youthful indiscretions like drug use. Integrity Violations? Yeah...not so much. That will get you an all expense paid ticket out of Quantico, from Reagan I think.<p>So...I don't know...police in California may think honesty is less than useful, but I would be careful about painting all law enforcement, military and intel agencies with too broad a brush.<p>The only thing one can reasonably conclude from your experience, is that there is a chance that certain California police forces could be corrupt. Which, frankly, comes as little surprise to people outside of California. Though I can understand the consternation it may cause to people in California.
Great quote by an Australian immigration officer:<p>“You give us the papers <i>we</i> want. We give you the papers <i>you</i> want.”<p>Meaning:<p>“Just make the form look the way you know we want it to look, and we'll give you the resulting documents you want.”
There is actually research showing that police officers are vastly more likely to lie about their past drug use than the general public. In fact, this is one of the reasons we know that surveys of drug usage are generally accurate.<p>Erowid explains it here, I think in part 2 of the article:<p><a href="http://www.erowid.org/psychoactives/statistics/statistics_article1.shtml" rel="nofollow">http://www.erowid.org/psychoactives/statistics/statistics_ar...</a>
Going into college, I had a scholarship with the Air Force ROTC program. I was honest about one specific allergy I had, and was denied my medical exam, thus I couldn't join the Air Force. I still did it for one semester, while applying for a medical waiver, and found out that several of the other cadets (especially those wanting to be pilots) had lied about particular issues. Several of those who did came from military families, who more or less knew how much you could fudge, and what you could get away with, and were open about lying about several more severe issues than mine.<p>Also one of my friends was rejected, because he was honest and said he smoked weed more than their arbitrary limit of 10 times in the past.
Fortunately for me, I have led a boring life and therefore I didn't find it difficult to tell the truth when I joined the Army.<p>On the other hand, I did have a friend who was told by his recruiter to be "honest." My friend didn't pick up on the recruiter's sarcasm so he told the entire truth about his past adventures with narcotics. He even told them that he has acid flashbacks a few times a year.<p>They still let my friend enlist(Hell, we were in the middle of a war), but it took him nearly all of his 4 year enlistment to get the Top Secret clearance he required to do his job. All of our supervisors acted like he was an idiot for actually telling the truth.
Ah yes, the eternal argument by anecdote.<p>So let's say you've shown that 'Honest People Might Be Dangerous'. How about a few anecdotes where a trivial lie led to a disaster? There, I've proven that 'Dishonest People Might Be Dangerous' too. What does this add up to? The ever-insightful 'People Might Be Dangerous' lemma. Now, given a choice between the 'Honest' and 'Not-entirely-honest' model of human, which one would you choose to work with?
This is not legal advice or anything, but if anyone ever asks you whether you've broken the law or consumed drugs etc in the past, you say no, regardless whether you're telling the truth or not.
The fear of hallucinogens is widespread in the blue universe. I've been told that former LSD users aren't allowed to be pilots in the U.S. because of the fear of "flasbacks"<p>You know there's some psychiatrist in Isreal who has diagnosed thousands of cases of "post hallucinogen perceptual disorder", probably because PHPD disqualifies a person from service in the Isreal armed forces.
I had my moment of zen when some secret service agents came to my house to question me about a 6-month-old Slashdot comment. They looked around for guns, and finding none, needed to administer a "metal health exam". As they started asking the questions, I realized "wait. these people are not doctors. they don't give a flying fuck about my mental health. they need me to say the correct answers so they can close their case." I answered the questions correctly and they closed their case.<p>The moral of the story: many questions are asked to see if you know the right answer, not because they actually want to know the answer to the question.
You have to be honest because you want to be. Because you dont want to project what you're not, and because you dont want to remember for the rest of the life the lie you said in order to be consistent.<p>Honesty is for yourself, and not for other people. In my opinion, it was right that you said the truth, and that you failed. You should argue that you shouldn't have failed, not that you dont need to tell the truth.<p>IMHO, and probably the contrarian view. But the contrarian view is of value because it makes you think. Please think of that before you downvote/upvote the comment.
Yup. The ability to deceive and manipulate is the most marketable skill on the planet. Security forces don't want folks with principles beyond doing what they're ordered to do. A cop that isn't willing to lie in court is going to win a lot fewer convictions.
The point of these questions is often to get you to lie. Oftentimes this is a felony in and of itself (for instance, in federal background investigations), which gives the organization requesting the information leverage over you (and also over any references that have falsely attested to your sobriety).
There's a bit more going on here.<p>Some companies give "honesty-integrity assessments" to predict whether candidates may steal from the company, sexually harass employees, etc. How do they predict whether someone would do that?<p>They simply ask.<p>People who steal gratuitously will often rationalize the behavior by convincing themselves that "everyone steals something." When they see the questions, they'll think that, if they mark that they would never steal anything, they'll be flagged as a liar. And then they're caught.<p>The drug questionnaire presumably acts under similar principles. The people who mark "Hallucinogens -- once in my life" tend to be the people who pop a pill every week.
The point is not to admit liars. They genuinely <i>don't</i> want stoners in the service.<p>Now, you can argue till you are blue in the face that you will simply get more dishonest members, and this greatly outweighs the benefits of throwing out a few occasional users. But, ultimately speaking, these admission conditions are designed by committees, and there's always someone on the committee who doesn't want stoners at any cost.
Unlike most jobs, being a police officer requires a lot of lying, from "We have proof you did it, so confess now" to "I stopped and searched him because I saw something suspicious". Other jobs, like being a researcher on classified projects have different requirements, and admitting to a bit of drug use there won't get you in trouble.
This is an example of a rule that is intertwined within the fabric of American society - Never take the blame.<p>At least not in a public place or where it will go on record. Even if its your fault, you regret what happened and want to make amends. Even in that case its better to push off all blame and then go ahead and make amends.<p>This goes for everything from car insurance to dealing with any government body to dealing with corporate workplace issues to dealing with Americans in general.<p>Recently I was struck by this thought when Rex Ryan took the blame for the JETS awful season and in doing so a lot of sports writers questioned whether that was wise because it could mean that another losing season would mean the end of his tenure. A lot of writers mentioned casting the blame on others was a better action for the coach to have followed. Or even to have said nothing at all.
My take on honesty:<p>I'm not comfortable being incongruent (ie having a mismatch between my inner state and outer communication).<p>Even a relatively small amount of incongruence (ie minor sucking-up to unworthy bosses, things of that nature) causes me to become cynical and jaded.<p>I think this is a good thing AND a bad thing. Good thing because people know that I am less likely to be a fake-fuck and just nod along with their bullshit, bad thing because sometimes life requires some machiavellianism and/or smarminess.<p>Solutions for this dilemma?<p>PS. Sebastian Marshall is my new favorite blogger these past couple of months. I love his style. I would recommend everyone get his book: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Ikigai-ebook/dp/B006M9T8NI" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Ikigai-ebook/dp/B006M9T8NI</a> (full disclosure: I want to gain some brownie-points from Mr Marshall).
Buddy of mine was getting a job where he needed to be heavily, heavily interviewed by CSIS.<p>Lots of polygraphs forms, etc. Detailed political interviews. Anyways, they get to this really thick form and the female CSIS interviewer says "please provide me a rough explanation of your history with illegal drugs," buddy says "Never. Not once." "Never?" "Never." One check box checked on the form the rest left unfilled.<p>Oh and my buddy was being truthful, but if you have to lie do it like that. "Never. Not once."
There is one great movie about this: Gattaca (1997) - <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/" rel="nofollow">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/</a>
More like Stupid People Might Be Dangerous. If you don't know to navigate a bureaucracy, don't expect to be anywhere near a position that might generate liability.
No police officer has ever smoked weed, yet they all instantly know and can identify the smell?<p>I doubt they disqualify ex military members because of the potential for flashbacks.
Good old Hypocrisy, the Human Race's favourite past-time.<p>I'm not saying the article is hypocritical, I'm observing the greater issue here. Sad, but true.
Honesty is seen as a liability in modern life. We never see it from politicians, bankers or public figures and people lie constantly about their CVs, jobs, income and so forth.<p>Why even bother <i>asking</i> if someone's ever done drugs? The chances are they will not be telling the truth anyhow, so you may as well rely on gut instinct and make the assumption everyone is lying all the time.<p>Sadly, today in every walk of life, its just a matter of making the "right" noises at the appropriate time to the right people. And that's not good. For anyone.<p>Tell the truth, shame the devil, take the consequences, one time. It often works out better than you might think.
Taking advice from Sebastian Marshall is dangerous. Seriously, are his articles being upvoted by trolls or are there actually that many morons in this community now? The kid wouldn't know the difference between a billion dollar business and a steaming bag of shit, and 30 seconds on his blog will prove I'm right. Shirtless homemade videos of yourself scribbling "business strategies" on a whiteboard and insulting every major company you've come in contact with? Classy.<p>I would say I pity him, but it's hard to feel sorry for someone who publicly ridicules his colleagues by repeatedly calling them all "fucking jokers" in a 10,000 word rant on his blog.<p>Downvote this if you're stupid enough to take advice from a tactless wannabe with the business sense of a doorknob.