I am currently active duty military and I'm testing for the Fire Dept. next month. I have some drug use in the past that doesn't match up with my military application. Should I stay consistent with what I told the recruiter 4 years ago and carry that over to the fire dept. application? Or are they not as concerned with drug history as the police or the feds ???
No I'm sure the fire dept would love to have a drugged up jerk driving one of those big ole red trucks.
Fed-up Fed,
Note that the poster spoke of past, not present, drug use.
Firefighters may be screened for illegal drug use through scientifically sound diagnostic tests. Polygraph screening, on the other hand, is a completely invalid technique for this purpose.
Dear Fireman,
You are in a difficult situation either way and it is impossible to advise you what to do. An intermittant or past drug issue is normally not of great concern. The problem would be if you knowingly submitted a statement to a specific question during your military application and it was false. The truth is easy to keep straight but keeping track of falsehoods and omissions for a lifetime gets to be very complicated and difficult. I am not judging you. I am only giving an opinion based on my experience.
Security agencies tend to assume that if you are willing to lie (or "omit the truth") to cover up information which might have a negative impact on your career than you will tend to think that this behavior will be acceptable in the future. During my Federal career, I have made mistakes but was always truthful about them. My superiors were not always happy about what I did but they were constantly reassured by my truthfulness that my word could be trusted and they were getting "all" the information that I had. Many records (especially ones regarding security investigations) are kept for very long periods of time. Since your "employment" with the military is a large part of your current work history, the paperwork is fresh and available.
I definitely know that the FBI has looked at and investigated all of my military and federal security paperwork (up to at least twenty years ago) for discrepancies in the history of certain answers and asked for clarifying memos. The questions were quite trivial in nature compared to a drug issue question which you are concerned about. I do not know how deep state and local agencies will go.
Regards.
Well Fed-up Fed, thank you for your insightful feedback.This "drugged up jerk" has served this country honorably in combat as well as peace time and has operated much more sophisticated equipment than "big red trucks". The discrepancy mentioned was simply marijuana use . It's a shame that such bitter close minded people like you are out there and so quickly to label people you know nothing about.
Fireman,
Don't worry about Fed-Up, he's been trying to break a nose-picking habit, and sometimes the only way he can do that is to type gibberish on these sites.
I have to say I agree with fair chance, they will probably look into it, so just come clean and reassure them of your integrity. My case is similar, but my marijuana use was mostly in high school and I haven't "documented" it anywhere. So in my case, the CM's worked.
Good luck with the job, my wife works for a fire dept, she's a medic and she loves it. ;)
Best of luck,
PK