Hi, I am currently past the first oral interview in a few towns and the day of admittance of my past is coming. I have done Extacy 10 times 3 years ago and smoked weed for 2 years, 2 years ago. I have 0 desire to do drugs and actually want to help people who do them clean themselves up. I have been drug-free for two years. Here is the question. With my past drug use, will ANY department hire me if I am honest about it (I haven't had to admit anything on any applications yet), or should I just admit a small amount of weed and 'block out' the X on the interview and polygraph? I dont want to lie, but I also do not want to be a toilet bowl cleaner or work some pensionless, slave job till the end of days. PLEASE HELP!

Axe wrote on Aug 4^th, 2006 at 7:14am:

Your use of MDMA will disqualify you from most, if not all departments.

You should tell the truth on your applications and if you are DQ'd for the actions you chose to take then take responsibility for those actions and move on.   

If you have to lie to get into law enforcement you don't belong there and will not do well.

Axe wrote on Aug 7^th, 2006 at 7:59am:

Other than lying, your option is to tell the truth and deal with the consequences like a mature, responsible adult.  If you can't do that then you don't belong in law enforcement.  We don't need or want irresponsible, immature people who think it's okay to lie to get out of trouble but try to convince themselves that they wouldn't lie about anything else.

Either you are ethical or you're not.  If you are willing to lie to avoid responsibility for a mistake or series of mistakes you made, you are not behaving in an ethical manner.

Tell the truth and if there are negative consequences you must deal with them.  That goes for everything in your life, not just police applications.