Five White House staffers have been fired a result of prior marijuana use, weeks after the Joe Biden administration said it would loosen these policies in an effort to modernize and expand the pool of people who can work there, Press Secretary Jen Psaki announced.

Marijuana has become a delicate issue for President Joe Biden’s administration because 15 states and Washington, D.C., allow for recreational usage, notwithstanding a federal prohibition.

The administration has tried not to automatically penalize potential staffers for legal behavior in their communities by developing a more flexible policy, Psaki said in a statement to The Associated Press.

"We announced a few weeks ago that the White House had worked with the security service to update the policies to ensure that past marijuana use wouldn't automatically disqualify staff from serving in the White House," Psaki said in a tweet on Friday.

As a result, more people would be able to serve in the US administration who would not have in the past with the same level of recent drug use, DPA news agency quoted the Press Secretary as further saying.

"The bottom line is this: of the hundreds of people hired, only five people who had started working at the White House are no longer employed as a result of this policy," she added.

A number of US states have legalized marijuana and other states are planning to decriminalize it. At the federal level, however, marijuana is still illegal in the US.

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