Loughner's alleged drug use and recruitment anecdotes

In October 2008, Loughner told an old friend, Bryce Tierney, that he wasn’ t going to smoke marijuana any more. Tierney never saw him smoke pot again, and was surprised at media reports that Loughner was rejected by the Army in 2009 for failing a drug test: “He was clean...| saw him after that continuously. He would not do it...After he quit, he was just off the wall." But Loughner did not fail a drug test that day at the processing station. Rather, he admitted on an application form that he had smoked marijuana “hundreds of times.” He didn’ t know that the military has an official maximum of times you can admit to smoking pot. A journalist | know acknowledges that he tried to join the Air Force at the San Diego recruitment office, but, “When the subject of drugs came up, | figured, okay, | have long hair, | look maybe homeless, they're going to know I'm lying if | say I've always been straight. I'll say I've smoked pot seven or eight times--something ridiculously, embarrassingly low. Whatever it was, it was too high. The recruiter said. ‘You can't have smoked more than five times. Go away, kid. Maybe the Marines will take you.’ Two weeks later | was at the Sacramento recruitment office and | had the ‘magic number.’ | joined the Air Force. One of the stupider things I've done.” Indeed, Chris Hedges wrote on 7ruthDig. “Power does not rest with HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015333