You seem to be assuming that the 25 or 30% of people who have used cannabis are all people that would otherwise be both interested and qualified as recruiting targets?
It's not clear to me that the requirement to be drug-free is excluding a lot of people who the railroads would otherwise want to hire.
No, they seem to be saying that people eligible and interested in railroads probably smoke weed at the same rate as the general population. There’s nothing to indicate that people who would be open and qualified are far more abstinent than the population at large.
It's not clear to me that the requirement to be drug-free is excluding a lot of people who the railroads would otherwise want to hire.