Democrat Targets Elon Musk, DOGE Employees With Drug Testing Bill

A Democratic lawmaker has introduced a long-shot bill to require special government employees, like Elon Musk and his DOGE cohort, to undergo regular drug testing.

Rep. Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey accused Musk of a “well-documented history of drug use” (allegations that he denies) while announcing the Drug Testing for Special Government Employees Act on Tuesday.

“Donald Trump has given billionaire Elon Musk the keys to our government, and with it, access to highly sensitive information — from Treasury and Social Security data to even our most guarded military plans,” Sherrill wrote in a press release. “Those with access to sensitive information must be thoroughly vetted, clear-eyed, and exercise good judgment.”

Sherrill argued that Musk and his underlings at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency should be held to the same standards as other executive-branch employees, whether for conflicts of interest or passing a drug test.

The bill, which has little hope of passing through the Republican-dominated legislature, would require special government employees to pass a drug test before their first day on the job and to undergo regular screenings thereafter. Anyone who tests positive for illegal substances would be barred from federal service for at least a year.

HuffPost has reached out to representatives for Musk and DOGE for comment.

Sherrill’s announcement linked to a January 2024 Wall Street Journal investigation, in which multiple sources close to Musk reportedly said they had witnessed or had direct knowledge of him using LSD, cocaine, ecstasy, mushrooms and ketamine.

The report also claimed that multiple Musk insiders, including high-level Tesla and SpaceX executives, were alarmed by his increasingly “volatile behavior.”

In response, Musk’s attorney, Alex Spiro, told the Journal that his client is “regularly and randomly drug tested at SpaceX” and has “never failed a test.”

The billionaire has openly admitted to using physician-prescribed ketamine for therapeutic purposes, however.

While questioning the impact of SSRI-style antidepressants in a 2023 tweet, Musk called ketamine, an anesthetic drug with dissociative and psychedelic effects, “a much better option.”