Second Amendment

SCOTUS Unanimously Ruled That the Second Amendment Trumps Anti-Drug Sentiment

The decision is a modest but welcome step toward rectifying the injustice of criminalizing conduct that violates no one’s rights.

Jacob Sullum | 6.24.2026 12:01 AM

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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........

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