Elon Musk, chair of the Trump administration’s newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), says it’s a “great idea” to mandate drug testing of federal employees as he pushes to make massive cuts to government agencies and spending.
In an X post on Saturday, Joshua Steinman—a former National Security Council (NSC) official who served during President Donald Trump’s first term—tagged DOGE and asked whether the department has “considered a federal workforce-wide, mandatory, immediate drug test.”
“Great idea,” Musk replied.
Some federal employees and contractors are already required to submit to pre-employment drug testing, though random screenings of workers are generally reserved for those select safety-sensitive or national security-related positions.
But as the billionaire works to cull the federal workforce, he’s evidently compelled by the idea of increasing drug testing, ostensibly in hopes of identifying workers who could be terminated for cause.
That’s despite the fact that Musk himself has previously gotten into hot water after puffing a marijuana joint on Joe Rogan’s podcast while owning a federally contracted aerospace company, SpaceX. (He later claimed he never actually inhaled.)
The DOGE chair has also disclosed his use of ketamine, and he said in 2021 that people should be “open to psychedelics.”
“A lot of people making laws are kind of from a different era, so I think, as the new generation gets into political power, I think we will see greater receptivity to the benefits of psychedelics,” he said at the time.
To read more, click on Marijuana Moment