According to the federal government, those darn pot-smoking hippies just can’t be trusted with their constitutional rights — even in states such as Nevada, where it’s perfectly legal.  

Despite a growing consensus in American politics that the federal prohibition on marijuana is unjust and unwise, federal prosecutors and the Justice Department (DOJ) are doubling down on efforts to curb the gun rights of individuals who use state-legalized cannabis products. 

In states such as Nevada, where recreational marijuana is legal, that means even casual users would technically be committing a felony punishable by as many as 15 years in prison if they happen to own a gun. In states where marijuana is limited only to medicinal use, it means many Americans have to choose between medical treatment and their Second Amendment rights.  

Following a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that upholds government’s ability to curtail the gun rights of anyone deemed to be “a credible threat to the physical safety of others,” the Justice Department is renewing its effort to disarm cannabis users. 

And to be clear, the DOJ isn’t merely trying to take gun rights away from violent users, nor is it merely trying to prohibit the act of bearing arms while intoxicated — which is quite rightly illegal in any event. Instead, the Justice Department is aiming to entirely strip gun rights from anyone who uses any form of legal cannabis, even if they pose no articulable threat to themselves or anyone else. 

To justify such a sweeping infringement on the firearm rights of otherwise law-abiding citizens, the DOJ is arguing that the mere use of cannabis is enough to determine someone poses a threat to “public safety.” Claiming that users are likely to commit crimes with firearms as a way “to fund their drug habit,” the brief reads more like a 1990’s Drug Abuse Resistance Education pamphlet than a serious legal argument made in 2024.

The renewed push to strip even peaceful cannabis consumers of basic civil rights is not entirely unsurprising from a Justice Department that has long been on the front lines of the nation’s illiberal and abusive drug war. However, it is distinctly at odds with the Biden administration’s supposed softening on the issue of criminalization. Following his State of the Union speech earlier this year, for example, President Joe Biden asserted that “no one should be jailed for simply using” marijuana.

The president’s shift away from his former days as an avid drug warrior, however, hasn’t abated the zealous anti-drug bigotry of the administration’s Justice Department. Indeed, on the same day President Biden spoke to the nation about the injustices of jailing people for cannabis, federal prosecutors in North Carolina likened users to “mentally ill” criminals as well as “infants, idiots, lunatics, and felons.”

In the filings submitted to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit last week, the DOJ doubled down on such language — arguing that America’s traditional level of firearm regulation allows for the government to disqualify broad classes of “irresponsible” people from enjoying Second Amendment protections. And as difficult as the term “irresponsible” might be to define legally, federal authorities apparently believe those who use federally controlled substances in accordance with local laws fit the bill. 

It’s not the only time prosecutors have used such an argument. In a separate case earlier this year, federal lawyers claimed that marijuana users, as a category, are more crime-prone than ordinary citizens thanks to their “drug habits,” and thus “pose a danger of using firearms to facilitate such crime.” They went on to assert that “criminal cases are replete with examples of crimes motivated by drug habits,” and should therefore justify a sweeping firearm prohibition among those who use such drugs — even if such use is prescribed by a doctor or is legal on the state level. 

Of course, deeming entire classes of Americans to be too “irresponsible” to exercise their constitutionally protected rights seems like a civil rights violation just waiting to happen. After all, the government could argue that “criminal cases are replete with examples of crimes motivated by” all sorts of traits, behaviors or other arbitrary conditions — including alcohol consumption, political beliefs or even economic circumstances. 

Amazingly enough, to justify its position that an entire category of Americans can arbitrarily be assumed too irresponsible and dangerous to be afforded constitutional rights, government lawyers turned to some of the most egregious examples of bigotry and legalized prejudice in American history as precedent. In one case, the Justice Department even argued that such sweeping prohibitions on firearm ownership are well within America’s “historical tradition” of regulating arms because our nation’s history is replete with examples of legislatures prohibiting former slaves, Catholics, loyalists and Native Americans from owning weapons. 

Thankfully, Judge Patrick Wyrick of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma considered such examples as legal models to avoid rather than emulate. In his ruling, he excoriated federal lawyers for claiming that such “ignominious historical restrictions” justify withholding civil rights from Americans deemed to be “untrustworthy” by authorities or legislatures.

Nonetheless, as their recent brief in the Eleventh Circuit demonstrates, the Justice Department and federal prosecutors are refusing to back down in their efforts to label America’s millions of peaceful and otherwise law-abiding cannabis users as deranged drug addicts unworthy of the constitution’s protections and privileges. For Biden’s Justice Department, the Nixonian anti-drug belief that “the devil’s lettuce” will turn kids into monsters isn’t some outdated propaganda from a bygone political era — it’s their primary argument for taking away people’s enumerated rights. 

And that’s something that should worry Americans far more than the supposed “drug habits” of a few pot-smoking hippies. 

Michael Schaus is a communications and branding expert based in Las Vegas, Nevada, and founder of Schaus Creative LLC — an agency dedicated to helping organizations, businesses and activists tell their story and motivate change. He has more than a decade of experience in public affairs commentary, having worked as a news director, columnist, political humorist, and most recently as the director of communications for a public policy think tank. Follow him at SchausCreative.com or on Twitter at @schausmichael.