Recruiting and hiring qualified peace officer candidates is a critical component in providing quality police services. This has never been an easy task, but the task is becoming even more difficult in recent years due to the shortage of workers in the upcoming generation as well as to the strict standards law enforcement organizations have adopted for police officer candidates.
Today, police agencies across the United States are struggling to fill existing vacancies amid dwindling applicant pools and the lure of better jobs in the private sector. Just when the law enforcement community thought the situation could not get worse, a new foe to hiring and recruiting has emerged. Drug decriminalization and the legalization of marijuana for medicinal purposes will make the task of hiring qualified police candidates more difficult over the next decade.
Preemployment drug use is becoming one of the most troublesome areas for prospective police recruits. Although there are many reasons for a candidate’s disqualification, most background investigators agree that prior drug use is among the top reasons.1 Now more than ever, agencies are being forced to take a hard look at the idea of modifying pre-hire drug use standards to ensure enough candidates to fill vacancies.
This article examines the issues of drug decriminalization and rising drug use in the future applicant pools as a result of societal shifts in drug use and acceptance of this behavior.
