The Supreme Court docket simply agreed to listen to a case that completely encapsulates the absurdity of hashish prohibition in 2025: United States v. Hemani, which is able to decide whether or not People who use marijuana can train their Second Modification proper to personal firearms. Let that sink in for a second. We’re debating whether or not one constitutional proper might be stripped away since you train private autonomy over your personal consciousness utilizing a plant that is authorized in half the states and has by no means precipitated a deadly overdose in recorded human historical past.
Ali Danial Hemani, a Texas man, had his felony gun cost dismissed by the fifth Circuit Court docket of Appeals after judges discovered that the federal ban on drug customers proudly owning firearms is unconstitutional beneath the Supreme Court docket’s expanded view of gun rights. The Trump administration—regardless of its supposed assist for Second Modification freedoms—is now asking the Supreme Court docket to revive the case, arguing that common hashish customers pose “a critical public security danger.”
This is identical federal regulation that convicted Hunter Biden earlier than his father pardoned him. The identical regulation that classifies somebody who smokes a joint on Saturday night as equally prohibited from gun possession as somebody hooked on methamphetamine or heroin. The identical regulation that places hundreds of thousands of People—at the very least 20% of whom have tried marijuana in line with federal well being information—susceptible to felony prosecution merely for exercising two constitutionally protected rights concurrently.
The federal government’s argument rests on the premise that hashish customers are inherently harmful, mentally compromised, or in any other case unfit to responsibly personal firearms. That is offensive horseshit. It isn’t primarily based on proof, information, or any rational evaluation of danger. It is primarily based on many years of anti-cannabis propaganda that criminalized a plant to regulate particular populations, and it represents precisely what the Struggle on Medication has all the time been: a mechanism to bypass constitutionally protected liberties.
The Structure does not say “the fitting of the individuals to maintain and bear Arms, shall not be infringed—until they use substances the federal government disapproves of.” The Second Modification is absolute in its language, simply because the Fourth Modification protects towards unreasonable searches and the First Modification protects speech. But hashish prohibition has been wielded as a device to strip People of those rights for over half a century, creating what quantities to authorized second-class citizenship for anybody who chooses to eat a plant.
This is not about public security. FBI information exhibits that over 200,000 People had been arrested for hashish final 12 months, the overwhelming majority for easy possession. Hashish arrests proceed to be the first driver of the Struggle on Medication, not as a result of marijuana is harmful, however as a result of it is easy to prosecute and offers a handy excuse to deprive residents of their constitutional rights. If this regulation stands, we’re endorsing a system the place the federal government can cherry-pick which constitutional protections apply primarily based on arbitrary prohibitions that lack scientific, ethical, or constitutional justification.
Let’s look at the federal government’s argument with the scrutiny it deserves. The Justice Division claims that Part 922(g)(3) of federal regulation—which prohibits “an illegal consumer of or hooked on any managed substance” from possessing firearms—is a “slender” and justifiable restriction on gun rights. They argue it is analogous to historic restrictions on “routine drunkards” and that common drug customers pose public security dangers that warrant disarming them.
This logic collapses beneath the slightest examination. First, hashish is barely “illegal” as a result of the federal authorities maintains its Schedule I classification—a designation that claims marijuana has “no at the moment accepted medical use” and “excessive potential for abuse.” That is demonstrably false. Thirty-eight states have legalized medical marijuana. Twenty-four states have legalized leisure use. The federal authorities itself holds patents on cannabinoids for medical purposes. The one purpose hashish customers are “illegal” is as a result of the federal government says so, making a round justification for stripping constitutional rights.
The analogy to “routine drunkards” really undermines the federal government’s place. Historic restrictions on intoxicated individuals carrying firearms had been about being actively beneath the affect—being drunk whereas armed. They weren’t blanket lifetime bans on anybody who frequently drinks alcohol. Because the fifth Circuit appropriately famous, you possibly can bar somebody from carrying a gun whereas intoxicated, however you can’t categorically disarm all individuals who drink frequently. The identical precept applies to hashish.
The fifth Circuit acquired this proper after they dominated that the federal government should present somebody was really excessive whereas possessing a firearm, not merely that they use hashish frequently. That is the one constitutionally defensible place. When you’re impaired whereas dealing with a weapon, that is a respectable security concern whatever the substance concerned. However being an everyday consumer—somebody who consumes hashish within the privateness of their dwelling on evenings and weekends—presents no heightened danger in comparison with the hundreds of thousands of People who personal weapons and in addition eat alcohol.
The federal government’s case towards Hemani illustrates this completely. FBI brokers discovered a 9mm pistol, 60 grams of marijuana, and 4.7 grams of cocaine in his dwelling throughout a search. Hemani was solely charged with the gun crime—not drug trafficking, not cocaine possession, simply the technical violation of being a hashish consumer who owned a firearm. The federal government tried to color him as harmful by mentioning alleged connections to Iran and suspected fraud schemes, however notably filed no costs associated to any of that. His attorneys appropriately recognized this as a “thinly veiled try and inject prejudicial and irrelevant allegations” to distract from the weak point of the particular case.
If Hemani really represented a nationwide safety risk, why was the one cost filed a technical gun possession violation? As a result of the federal government is aware of they haven’t any proof of dangerousness, no proof he was impaired whereas dealing with the weapon, and no respectable public security justification for prosecution. They’re utilizing hashish prohibition as a workaround to punish somebody they believe of different actions however cannot really show.
That is exactly how the Struggle on Medication has all the time functioned: as a parallel authorized system that enables the federal government to prosecute individuals after they lack proof for respectable crimes. Cannot show somebody is a drug vendor? Arrest them for possession. Cannot show they’re concerned in terrorism? Cost them with being a hashish consumer who owns a gun. The drug warfare offers infinite alternatives for selective enforcement and pretextual prosecution.
Contemplate the info: FBI statistics present that hashish arrests accounted for over 200,000 arrests in 2024 alone, with the overwhelming majority being for easy possession. These aren’t harmful criminals. These aren’t public security threats. These are primarily bizarre People being swept into the prison justice system for consuming a substance that half the states have decided is authorized for adults. And as soon as arrested, they face cascading penalties: lack of employment, housing discrimination, pupil mortgage ineligibility, and sure, everlasting lack of Second Modification rights.
The federal government argues hashish customers pose “critical public security dangers,” however the place’s the info? The place are the research exhibiting that marijuana customers usually tend to commit gun violence than the overall inhabitants? They do not exist, as a result of the premise is fake. If something, analysis suggests hashish customers are much less more likely to interact in violent conduct than alcohol drinkers. But we do not categorically disarm everybody who drinks beer.
The Solicitor Basic’s temporary claims the restriction is a “modest, trendy analogue of a lot harsher founding-era restrictions on routine drunkards.” That is historic revisionism. Our founding fathers grew hemp. George Washington cultivated hashish. Thomas Jefferson praised its versatility. The concept that the framers of the Structure meant to disarm residents for utilizing a plant they themselves cultivated is traditionally illiterate and constitutionally bankrupt.
Let’s deal with what that is actually about: the Struggle on Medication has all the time been a mechanism to bypass constitutional protections and create classes of legally deprived People. This is not conspiracy principle—it is documented historical past confirmed by the very architects of those insurance policies.
John Ehrlichman, President Nixon’s home coverage advisor, admitted in a 1994 interview: “We knew we could not make it unlawful to be both towards the warfare or Black, however by getting the general public to affiliate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, after which criminalizing each closely, we might disrupt these communities. We might arrest their leaders, raid their properties, break up their conferences, and vilify them evening after evening on the night information. Did we all know we had been mendacity concerning the medicine? In fact we did.”
That is the origin story of the Struggle on Medication: a deliberate technique to criminalize political opposition and minority communities by criminalizing their related substances. Hashish prohibition was by no means about public well being or security. It was about social management, and stripping constitutional rights was all the time a part of the design.
The Thirteenth Modification abolished slavery and involuntary servitude “besides as a punishment for crime whereof the social gathering shall have been duly convicted.” This exception created a loophole: criminalize conduct, and you’ll legally enslave individuals once more. The Struggle on Medication exploited this loophole brilliantly. By criminalizing substances used disproportionately by Black People and political dissidents, the federal government created a pipeline for mass incarceration that features as a contemporary type of authorized slavery.
The statistics bear this out. Black People are arrested for hashish at almost 4 instances the speed of white People regardless of related utilization charges. As soon as arrested, they face harsher sentences, fewer alternatives for diversion packages, and cascading penalties that embody lack of voting rights in lots of states and everlasting prohibition from gun possession. This is not unintended disparity—it is the system working precisely as designed.
Part 922(g)(3), the regulation at subject in Hemani, is an ideal instance of how drug prohibition strips constitutional rights. By classifying hashish customers as “prohibited individuals,” the federal government creates a everlasting underclass of People who lose Second Modification protections not as a result of they’ve dedicated violent crimes or proven themselves harmful, however as a result of they eat a substance that is authorized of their state however prohibited by federal fiat.
That is significantly insidious as a result of the prohibition is selective. The federal government does not prosecute everybody who makes use of hashish—that may be not possible on condition that at the very least 20% of People have tried marijuana and hundreds of thousands use it frequently. As an alternative, they use hashish prohibition as a device for selective enforcement, prosecuting individuals they wish to punish for different causes whereas ignoring hundreds of thousands of others who commit the identical technical violation.
Wish to go after somebody for unrelated causes however lack proof? Test in the event that they use hashish and personal a gun. Instantaneous felony. That is the way you create a dragnet the place everyone seems to be technically responsible of one thing, permitting prosecutors limitless discretion over who to cost. It is the criminalization of on a regular basis conduct, turning constitutional rights into privileges that may be revoked at authorities whim.
The monetary facet of this method can’t be ignored. The prison-industrial complicated generates billions in income from incarcerating drug offenders. Personal prisons revenue from housing them. Police departments get federal funding primarily based on drug arrest numbers. Prosecutors construct careers on drug convictions. There are highly effective financial incentives to keep up prohibition no matter its social prices or constitutional implications.
Hashish arrests stay the first driver of the Struggle on Medication exactly as a result of they’re straightforward. Hashish use is widespread, comparatively straightforward to detect, and carries social stigma that makes prosecution publicly acceptable. The FBI’s personal information confirms this: of the 200,000+ hashish arrests in 2024, the overwhelming majority had been for possession, not distribution or trafficking. These are low-hanging fruit for regulation enforcement—straightforward arrests that pad statistics with out really addressing violent crime or public security threats.
The system additionally creates a self-perpetuating cycle. As soon as somebody is arrested for hashish, they enter the prison justice system the place they’re topic to drug testing, probation circumstances, and surveillance that makes future arrests extra doubtless. They lose job alternatives, making financial survival harder and crime extra engaging. They lose gun rights, making self-defense not possible in harmful neighborhoods. They turn out to be second-class residents whose constitutional protections are conditional reasonably than assured.
That is by design. The Struggle on Medication was by no means meant to get rid of drug use—that was all the time an not possible aim. It was meant to create a authorized framework for controlling populations deemed threatening by the state. Hashish prohibition particularly focused counterculture actions within the Sixties and 70s, Black communities organizing for civil rights, and anybody who rejected mainstream social conformity. Stripping gun rights from these populations was all the time a part of the plan.
The Supreme Court docket faces an easy query in United States v. Hemani: Can the federal government strip constitutional rights from hundreds of thousands of People primarily based on their consumption of a substance that is authorized in half the states, has documented medical purposes, and poses no heightened public security danger in comparison with authorized intoxicants?
The reply must be equally easy: No.
The Second Modification does not embody a drug exception. The Structure does not empower the federal authorities to create classes of second-class residents who forfeit elementary rights as a result of they eat substances the federal government disapproves of. The Struggle on Medication has all the time been a constitutional end-run, a solution to punish and management populations that may’t be focused instantly as a result of the Structure protects them. This case provides the Court docket a possibility to lastly acknowledge that actuality and restore constitutional protections to hundreds of thousands of People.
The fifth Circuit acquired it proper: you possibly can prohibit somebody from possessing firearms whereas actively intoxicated, simply as you possibly can prohibit drunk driving or public intoxication. That is a respectable security concern. However you can’t categorically disarm everybody who drinks alcohol, and you can’t categorically disarm everybody who makes use of hashish. The constitutional commonplace should be impairment on the time of possession, not standing as an everyday consumer.
The sensible implications of ruling for the federal government are staggering. Not less than 20% of People have tried marijuana. Tens of hundreds of thousands use it frequently. Half the states have legalized leisure use, and 38 states enable medical use. If the Court docket upholds Part 922(g)(3), it’ll successfully create a large class of technical felons—people who find themselves authorized hashish customers beneath state regulation however prohibited individuals beneath federal regulation. That is untenable in a constitutional republic.
Extra basically, this case exemplifies why hashish prohibition should finish totally. The federal authorities’s continued classification of marijuana as Schedule I—extra harmful than cocaine or methamphetamine in line with the DEA—is scientifically indefensible and constitutionally harmful. So long as hashish stays federally prohibited, it is going to be weaponized to strip rights from residents who would in any other case face no authorized penalties.
The Struggle on Medication has failed by each measurable metric. It hasn’t decreased drug use. It hasn’t made communities safer. It hasn’t addressed habit or public well being. What it has completed is mass incarceration of nonviolent offenders, destruction of households and communities, and creation of a authorized framework for circumventing constitutional protections. Hashish arrests stay the first driver of this failed system, with over 200,000 People arrested final 12 months for a substance that hundreds of thousands use responsibly and legally beneath state regulation.
The argument that hashish customers are inherently harmful is offensive to the hundreds of thousands of taxpaying People who use marijuana responsibly whereas sustaining careers, households, and civic obligations. These aren’t criminals. They’re your neighbors, colleagues, and relations. They’re navy veterans utilizing hashish for PTSD. They’re most cancers sufferers managing signs. They’re adults making knowledgeable decisions about their very own consciousness. And beneath the Structure, they’ve the identical proper to maintain and bear arms as some other citizen.
The federal government’s place in Hemani is that hashish use alone justifies everlasting disarmament. This can not stand. If the Supreme Court docket endorses this reasoning, it’ll sign that any constitutional proper might be stripped away by means of the mechanism of drug prohibition. The federal government might prolong this logic to different rights: hashish customers cannot vote, cannot communicate freely, cannot be free from unreasonable searches. In spite of everything, in the event that they pose such a “critical public security danger” that they cannot personal weapons, why ought to they take pleasure in any constitutional protections?
That is the slippery slope that the fifth Circuit acknowledged and rejected. When you settle for that the federal government can create prohibited courses of residents primarily based on substance use that the Structure does not point out, you have deserted constitutional governance totally. You have created a system the place rights are privileges dispensable at authorities discretion, which is exactly what the Structure was designed to stop.
Hashish customers aren’t mentally in poor health. They are not inherently harmful. They are not criminals deserving of second-class citizenship. They’re People exercising private autonomy in a supposedly free society, and their constitutional rights must be inviolable no matter which substances they select to eat. The Supreme Court docket ought to affirm what the fifth Circuit acknowledged: Part 922(g)(3) is an unconstitutional infringement on Second Modification rights that can not be justified by the failed insurance policies of the Struggle on Medication.
The broader struggle continues. Hashish should be descheduled on the federal stage, ending the authorized fiction that enables these constitutional violations. Till that occurs, each hashish arrest, each prosecution, each rights violation beneath colour of drug regulation is a stain on American justice. The Struggle on Medication has all the time been a warfare on constitutional liberty, and hashish customers deserve full restoration of their rights as residents.
The Court docket’s choice in Hemani will decide whether or not hundreds of thousands of People can train their constitutional rights or whether or not the federal government can proceed utilizing hashish prohibition as a device for selective disarmament and social management. The Structure calls for one reply. I hope the Supreme Court docket has the knowledge to supply it.
WEED AND THE SECOND AMENDMENT, READ ON…
