Reversing a 13-year ban, the FBI now says that individuals who have used marijuana on more than an occasional basis in the past may apply for jobs as federal agents, USA Today reported Aug. 1.

The agency lifted its blanket ban on applicants who admitted using marijuana more than 15 times as it embarks on a plan to hire hundreds of new agents. The new policy, adopted without public notice in January, was intended to counter high rates of disqualifications among applicants.

Jeff Berkin, deputy director of the FBI's Security Division, said the change was made because officials were concerned that the policy was disqualifying applicants who may have only experimented with the drug. Also, he said, applicants sometimes ran afoul of polygraph tests because of uncertainty over whether they had smoked marijuana more than 15 times.

"It encourages honesty and allows us to look at the whole person," Berkin said of the new policy.

"Increasingly, the goal for the screening of security clearance applicants is whether you are a current drug user, rather than whether you used in the past," said Office of National Drug Control Policy spokesperson Tom Riley. "It's not whether you have smoked pot four times or 16 times 20 years ago. It's about whether you smoked last week and lied about it."

Police departments also have struggled with the problem of large numbers of applicants being disqualified because of past drug use. In Las Vegas, for example, 70 percent of applicants for jobs as police officers failed background checks for various reasons. Meanwhile, the Iraq was has limited the pool of potential applicants as well as sapping police manpower.