A federal judge has dismissed a suit that aimed to give medical cannabis patients legal access to firearms.
The case centers around a federal law that prohibits lying on firearm application forms. The form asks whether the applicant uses illegal drugs and specifically notes that cannabis is in this category regardless of state law.
Florida Agricultural Commissioner Nikki Fried filed a lawsuit against the US Department of Justice (DOJ) earlier this year, stating that while her views on gun control align with her peers in the Democratic party, the ban on allowing medical cannabis patients to purchase firearms implied that they were dangerous.
In the most recent ruling on the case, a federal judge dismissed the suit, saying that the federal government’s argument that cannabis users were dangerous had merit.
“Laws keeping guns from the mentally ill likewise flow from the historical tradition of keeping guns from those in whose hands they could be dangerous. Plaintiffs recoil at being compared to the mentally ill … but one does not have to label marijuana users mentally ill to recognize that both categories of people can be dangerous when armed,” the judge wrote.
The judge said that a legislative rider that blocks the DOJ from using funds to prosecute cannabis companies in states that have legalized the drug does not apply in this instance since patients would be prosecuted for lying on a federal form—not for possessing or using cannabis.
NM Cannabis Chamber Creates Job Board
The New Mexico Cannabis Chamber of Commerce (NMCCC) recently announced that it has created a new website that will help employers and workers connect through online job postings.
The board hosts local job listings in the expanding cannabis industry, and already has around 100 entries. NMCCC members can post listings for free while non-members can pay $50 for a 30-day listing, $75 for a 60-day listing or $100 for a 90-day listing.
NMCC Executive Director Ben Lewinger told Albuquerque Business First that he hopes the board becomes the premier place to find cannabis jobs in New Mexico.
US House Holds Cannabis Hearing
Federal legislators held a hearing this week to discuss cannabis reform.
The House Oversight Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Subcommittee said the hearing, titled “Developments in State Cannabis Laws and Bipartisan Cannabis Reforms at the Federal Level,” was meant to address recent developments in state-level cannabis legislation and bipartisan reform efforts currently being made in Congress.
House lawmakers have passed a number of cannabis reform bills in recent years, but none of them have made it through the Senate and onto the president’s desk. The House passed the Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act for the second time in April, though it failed to move after that.