The Navy is no longer immediately kicking out recruits who arrive at boot camp at Recruit Training Command in Great Lakes, Illinois, with detectable amounts of marijuana in their system.
The service has expanded the authority to grant waivers for any recruits who initially test positive for THC, the main psychoactive compound in marijuana, Rear Adm. James Waters, the director of the Navy’s military personnel plans and policy division, told a group of reporters Thursday.
“If they fail that test and own up — ‘Yes, I smoke marijuana ‘– we do an evaluation of the young person to make sure there’s not something else going on,” Waters said. “But we trust that through the process of boot camp that we have an opportunity to bring them along with our culture.”
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Waters explained that the move was driven in part to be “reflective of where legislation is in society.” “We recognize that many states have legalized marijuana,” he said.
However, the admiral stressed that there are no conversations about offering a similar leniency for any other drugs and noted that “we don’t do drugs in the military.”
The move joins a host of other recent changes that the Navy has put in place to help reduce the number of sailors who drop out of boot camp and are unable to continue on in their military career. The result is that the current dropout rate in boot camp is around 10% — one of the lowest in recent history.
The move to decrease the number of recruits that the Navy loses throughout the boot camp process is part of its effort to deal with the recruiting crisis that has plagued all the services for the last several years.
Waters’ boss, Vice Adm. Rick Cheeseman, has previously said that only about 10% of scheduled recruiter appointments convert into sailors entering the delayed-entry program or boot camp after about five months.
While that percentage increases if the potential recruit has mentorship from someone with Navy experience, according to Cheeseman, the sea service is still looking to minimize any further losses as those interested civilians become recruits and, eventually, sailors.
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