3 hours ago
The Supreme Court has a history of facilitating the war on drugs by whittling away at civil liberties, to the point that critics have long perceived a "drug exception" to the Bill of Rights. But last week, when the justices unanimously upheld the gun rights of cannabis consumers, they made it clear that there is no drug exception to the Second Amendment.
The Court's consensus reflects the blatant illogic of a federal law that makes it a felony, punishable by up to 15 years in prison, for an "unlawful user" of "any controlled substance" to possess a firearm. That policy is so clearly inconsistent with "this Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation," the lodestar of the Court's Second Amendment decisions, that jurists and organizations across the political spectrum united in condemning it.
The case involved Ali Hemani, a Texas man who admitted he owned a pistol and used marijuana a few times a week, which would have been enough to convict him of illegal gun possession. But a federal judge dismissed the charge on Second Amendment grounds, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upheld that decision.
The 5th Circuit, which is often described as the country's most conservative federal appeals court, said that result was consistent with its prior conclusion that the Second Amendment bars such prosecutions when they are based on nothing more than the statutory elements. The Trump administration, despite its avowed commitment to "protecting Second Amendment rights," asked the Supreme Court to reject the 5th Circuit's reasoning and reinstate the charge against Hemani.
The case featured strange bedfellows on both sides. Counterintuitively, the attorneys general of 18 blue states that have legalized recreational marijuana joined the Trump administration in urging the Supreme Court to allow Hemani's prosecution, apparently because they thought protecting gun control was more important than defending the principle that cannabis should be treated like alcohol.
The Court's consensus reflects the blatant illogic of a federal law that makes it a felony, punishable by up to 15 years in prison, for an "unlawful user" of "any controlled substance" to possess a firearm. That policy is so clearly inconsistent with "this Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation," the lodestar of the Court's Second Amendment decisions, that jurists and organizations across the political spectrum united in condemning it.
The case involved Ali Hemani, a Texas man who admitted he owned a pistol and used marijuana a few times a week, which would have been enough to convict him of illegal gun possession. But a federal judge dismissed the charge on Second Amendment grounds, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upheld that decision.
The 5th Circuit, which is often described as the country's most conservative federal appeals court, said that result was consistent with its prior conclusion that the Second Amendment bars such prosecutions when they are based on nothing more than the statutory elements. The Trump administration, despite its avowed commitment to "protecting Second Amendment rights," asked the Supreme Court to reject the 5th Circuit's reasoning and reinstate the charge against Hemani.
The case featured strange bedfellows on both sides. Counterintuitively, the attorneys general of 18 blue states that have legalized recreational marijuana joined the Trump administration in urging the Supreme Court to allow Hemani's prosecution, apparently because they thought protecting gun control was more important than defending the principle that cannabis should be treated like alcohol.
