Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) didn't think it was very funny when FBI director James Comey, Jr. quipped that the agency was having a problem finding qualified computer specialists who don't smoke marijuana.
“I have to hire a great work force to compete with those cyber criminals and some of those kids want to smoke weed on the way to the interview,” he said in response to an audience question at the White Collar Crime Institute conference on May 20. Anyone who has used pot as far as three years ago is excluded from applying.
Two days later, at a Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing, Sessions told Comey that his remark "could be interpreted as one more example of leadership in America dismissing the seriousness of marijuana use."
Comey admitted that he was "trying to be both serious and funny" at the conference. "Young people's attitudes and our states' attitudes about marijuana are leading to more of them to try it," the country's top cop explained.
Sessions clearly didn't get the joke, noting that "could undermine our ability to convince young people to not go down a dangerous path."
Comey took over the FBI last September; the 53-year-old Republican is the agency's seventh all-time director. Previously, he was Assistant Attorney General under Pres. G.W. Bush and U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
