Dozens of individuals allegedly linked to the most powerful cartel in Mexico were arrested and charged by federal agents in California and elsewhere in the western United States, the Department of Justice announced this week. 

The DOJ said that 14 “indictments were unsealed [on Wednesday] charging 47 alleged members of an Imperial Valley, California-based, Sinaloa Cartel-linked fentanyl-and-methamphetamine distribution network with drug trafficking, firearms, and money laundering offenses.”

The Sinaloa Cartel is one of the biggest crime syndicates in the world, and has increasingly been the focus of law enforcement in the U.S. It is perhaps best known as the cartel that had long been run by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, who is currently serving a lifetime sentence at a maximum security prison in Colorao.

Describing it as a “coordinated takedown” executed on Wednesday morning, the Justice Department said that “more than 400 federal, state, and local law enforcement officials arrested 36 defendants and executed 25 search warrants in Imperial County; San Diego; Fresno, California; Los Angeles; Phoenix; and Salem, Oregon.” The agency said that, as of Wednesday afternoon, the search remained ongoing for 11 fugitives.

Court records show that, in June of 2021, “agents seized two pounds of methamphetamine and a cache of ghost guns and ammunition, including: 15 lower receivers, three upper receivers, multiple barrels and stocks, 18 magazines, 40 Luger 9mm rounds, and approximately 400 rounds of .223 Red Army ammunition, which are made in Russia,” the Justice Department said in the announcement on Wednesday.“

None of the firearms or firearm parts had any identifying serial numbers or markings. They were all ghost guns. Wiretap intercepts showed that defendant Cory Gershen supplied other members of the organization with ghost guns in exchange for methamphetamine. The investigation also revealed the assault rifles (depicted below) were destined for the organization’s source of supply in Mexico,” the announcement said.

On that same day in June of 2021, “agents seized additional ghost guns, ammunition, and methamphetamine from another member of the same drug trafficking organization,” according to the Justice Department, which added that “agents seized two AR-style ghost guns and a Colt .380 semiautomatic handgun, and additional Russian rifle ammunition from defendant Guadalupe Molina-Flores, one of the alleged members of the trafficking organization.” 

“According to a search warrant, after seizing the firearms, agents searched Molina-Flores’ residence and found 309.4 grams (0.68 pounds) of methamphetamine,” Wednesday’s announcement said.

The DOJ also noted that its investigation “revealed that the price per fentanyl pill has plummeted.” 

“For example, in June 2021, targets of the investigation were obtaining fentanyl pills in Imperial Valley at approximately $1.65 to $1.75 per pill. By December 2021, the prices being discussed had dropped to approximately $1.25 per pill. By May, the same pills were being sold at only 45 cents per pill — less than one-third of the price three years earlier. The precipitous drop in price reflects the increased supply and availability of fentanyl being smuggled into the United States and the close ties between targets of this investigation and their Sinaloa Cartel supplier of fentanyl pills,” the announcement said.

More from the DOJ’s announcement:

“Including seizures today and throughout the long-term investigation, authorities have confiscated more than four kilograms of fentanyl, which amounts to about two million potentially fatal doses; more than 324 kilograms (over 714 pounds) of methamphetamine; significant quantities of cocaine and heroin; and 52 firearms, including handguns and rifles. The investigation also resulted in the arrest of Alexander Grindley for alleged methamphetamine trafficking while employed as a U.S. Border Patrol agent and multiple spin-off investigations in this district and others. Crimes charged in the indictments include drug trafficking, money laundering, and gun-related offenses. Court documents indicated the defendants were operating throughout the Imperial Valley — in Brawley, El Centro, Westmoreland, Imperial, Calexico, Niland, Holtville, Calipatria — and in Mexicali, Mexico.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland said that the takedown means the Justice Department has “dealt yet another blow to the Sinaloa Cartel and its associates.”

“I am grateful to the more than 400 law enforcement officers whose work in this operation resulted in dozens of arrests, charges against 47 defendants, and the seizure of firearms, meth, cocaine, heroin, and two million potentially lethal doses of fentanyl. We will continue to be relentless in our fight to protect American communities from the cartels,” Garland said in a statement on Wednesday.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas said that his department “and our federal, state, and local partners are unrelenting in our work to keep deadly fentanyl off our streets and bring those who traffic in it to justice.” 

“The indictments unsealed today are the direct result of our multipronged and coordinated law enforcement approach — one that utilizes all of our government’s resources and capabilities. Together, we are preventing fentanyl and other deadly drugs from being produced, distributed, or consumed, and saving countless lives,” Mayorkas said.

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As adult-use cannabis reform has continued to expand throughout the United States, a number of courts have increasingly challenged the current federal law deeming that “a person who is an unlawful user of or who is addicted to a controlled substance” cannot possess a firearm. This law has regularly been extended to cannabis users, even in states that have legalized it.

In recent years, this oft-criticized policy has been met with challenges by numerous federal courts deeming it unconstitutional given the current state of legal cannabis throughout the U.S.

As the first state to usher in legal adult-use cannabis, Colorado is once again looking to make waves in the cannabis world by letting voters decide whether or not cannabis consumers should be allowed under state law to qualify for concealed carry permits, Denver7 reports.

Pro-gun rights organization Guns for Everyone posed the question, which could appear as an initiative on the November 2024 ballot. The organization trains for concealed carry permits, offering free classes for those new to firearms, tactics classes “for those who want to learn about the neuroscience during a fight” along with a class focused on gun law, according to its website.

Guns for Everyone Co-founder Edgar Antillon said that the question boils down to a “freedom issue,” especially relevant given that Colorado introduced recreational cannabis laws more than 10 years ago.

“It’s one of those silly things that has been going on for a while. We’ve legalized marijuana, but we don’t give [users] the ability to defend themselves,” Antillon said. “Alcohol users get to defend themselves. Why not marijuana users?”

Currently, sheriffs in Colorado cannot issue concealed carry permits to those “ineligible” under federal law. Since cannabis is still listed as a controlled substance, this prevents issuance of permits to anyone who is “an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance.”

The initiative currently looks to amend Colorado law to include that “a sheriff shall not use a permit applicant’s lawful use of marijuana … as a basis for denying the applicant a permit.”

Backers appeared at a Denver hearing on Tuesday to review comments and possible changes to the measure before submitting it to the secretary of state for review.

If passed, the initiative is set to take effect in December 2024, though this was flagged as a potential issue at the hearing, as election results may not be certified by that time, as reported by Marijuana Moment. Officials asked backers if the date could potentially be pushed back or if the proposal could be effective through a governor proclamation after election results are officially certified. Antillon and fellow Co-founder Isaac Chase both said they would be open to these options.

The Office of Legislative Services’ Conrad Imel also questioned if the initiative, as it is currently, could be interpreted to remove Colorado’s reference to other firearms restrictions, like bans for those who are dishonorably discharged from the military or who are committed to a mental institution. Antillon said that this was not the intent of the proposal and indicated that the campaign would strike the provision in question.

Antillon also addressed a concern surrounding the proposal’s possible intent to remove the authority of local sheriffs issuing permits to deny applications based on “a reasonable belief that documented previous behavior by the applicant makes it likely that the applicant will present a danger to the applicant’s self or others.” He said that this was not an aim of the proposal, adding that the goal was to reach a “fine balance” between protecting public safety and the freedom of the people.

“We don’t want to tackle all of the issues at the same time,” Antillon said.

As written, the measure would determine unlawful cannabis use through state law rather than federal law, which is the current practice. This would effectively create a divide between Colorado’s gun laws and the current federal law.

Up next, the initiative must be accepted and titled by the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office. At that point, organizers would be in the clear to begin collecting the required 125,000 signatures to put the issue before voters on Election Day next year.

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If you’ve ever listened to country music (there’s no shame in embracing your inner redneck), you’ve likely heard about cowboys modifying their trucks to have as much Big Dick Energy as possible. And when the rapper DMX died (rest in power) in 2021, his brilliant red casket was carried around his home city, New York, in a customized Ford F250 with “Long Live DMX” inscribed on its side.

But in Mexico, drug cartels are making monster trucks to use like tanks. The cartels are retrofitting pickups with battering rams, four-inch-thick steel plates welded onto their chassis complete with turrets for firing machine guns, The New York Times reports. 

These clever yet criminal gangs transforming trucks include the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, who use the vehicles for gun fights with the cops. The Treasury Department described Jalisco New Generation Cartel as one of the world’s “most prolific and violent drug trafficking organizations.” Known for their ultra-violence, they primarily deal with cocaine and meth and allegedly have forced recruits to engage in cannibalism by eating the flesh of murdered victims, The Daily Beast reports. 

Others, including the Gulf Cartel (one of Mexico’s oldest and original cartels) and the Northeast Cartel, bloodily enhance the vehicles to battle one another. They, too, proudly adorn the trucks with their initials, and camouflage is also a popular design (and makes it tricky to tell the monster trucks apart from the police’s vehicles). Mexican security forces call these trucks monstruos (monsters), rinocerontes (rhinos), and narcotanques (narco-tanks). Other weapons include (perhaps outfitted in the monster trucks) steel-penetrating Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifles, rocket launchers, and rocket-propelled grenades strong enough to shoot down military helicopters. 

It tracks that the cartels would utilize monster trucks. They have long used mechanic skills to modify cars to smuggle drugs across borders. Monster trucks really can be the war machines demolition derbies in the U.S., with car names like Reaper or Grave Digger, want them to be. “The monsters are the way to send the message, ‘I’m in charge, and I want everyone to see I’m in charge,’” said Mr. Le Cour, senior expert at the Switzerland-based Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime. “These are commando-style groups looking to replicate special forces in how they’re armed, how they’re trained, how they look” shares The New York Times.

But what’s happening in Mexico with monster trucks makes American demolition derbies look as innocent as a trip to DisneyLand. The cartel transforms trucks like the Ford Lobo (known as the Ford F-150 in the United States), the Ford Raptor, Chevrolet Tahoe, and even bigger vehicles such as dump trucks and heavy-duty trucks with large flatbeds and two rear wheels on each side. Technically, armoring a vehicle without authorization is a crime in Mexico punishable by up to 15 years in prison. This law has not stopped the weaponization of monster trucks. 

The state prosecutor’s office in Tamaulipas, the state along the border of North East Mexico, issued a statement last year citing the “danger to the safety of the community” the modified vehicles, which are especially prominent along the border, present. Since 2019, authorities destroyed more than 260 of these armored monster trucks just in Tamaulipas, one of Mexico’s 31 states, which along with Mexico City, make up the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. 

As badass as the amped-up trucks may sound, even the cartel has car problems. Weighed down by steel plates, the monstruos can be heavy, slow, and challenging to drive, especially in cities. Also, all that modification can lead to mechanical breakdowns. “They’re too slow, too heavy,” said Alexei Chévez, a security analyst based in Cuernavaca, Mexico, writes The New York Times. And the retrofitting of the vehicles means that some of their parts malfunction. “We see them constantly breaking down and being abandoned,” Mr. Chévez said.

But there’s one more weapon the cartels have at their disposal which will help ensure the deadly monster truck’s legacy: social media. The monstruos often appear on TikTok, tricked out and deadly, accompanied by cartel rap songs. While the Mexican police will continue to battle them, it’s hard to fight cool. 

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The ATF released clarification on May 30 to firearm owners after the passage of cannabis legalization in Minnesota, reminding them that until federal law changes, they no longer have a right to own or possess guns or ammunition, that is if they partake in smoking, eating, or vaping the newly legalized, devil’s lettuce.

Please see: ATF Provides Clarification Related to New Minnesota Marijuana Law.

If you were to ask a convicted felon if they have a legal right to possess a firearm, they would say no. They know this because they were informed by the court that because they were convicted of a felony, the Second Amendment no longer applies to them, and they know that if they’re caught with a firearm, or even ammunition, they face more time in prison for the illegal possession of a firearm, than for the new crime they are caught committing.

If you were to ask someone who has never been convicted of anything, but they carry a medical marijuana card or live in a state where cannabis is now legal and they like to partake occasionally, if they think that they have a right to own or possess a firearm, they would of course say yes, but they would be wrong.

I am really writing this as a public service announcement, in hopes that I don’t see more of my friends do more time in prison for gun charges, for possession of what they thought were legal guns, because it seems that the cannabis community does not understand that the federal government takes away your Second Amendment rights as soon as you pick up a joint, and it does not matter if the state you live in is legal or not, or if you are dying of cancer.

As soon as you toke, take a bong hit, smoke a j, eat a brownie, vaporize or otherwise ingest a Schedule 1 substance, you completely lose your right to own, possess, or handle any type of firearm or ammunition.

Or as the 9th Circuit pointed out in Wilson vs. Lynch:

“Turning to federal firearms provisions, under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3) no person ‘who is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance’ may ‘possess . . . or . . . receive any firearm or ammunition.’ In addition, it is unlawful for ‘any person to sell or otherwise dispose of any firearm or ammunition to any person knowing or having reasonable cause to believe that such person . . . is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance.’”

And it gets worse, because what the federal court defines as an “unlawful user” has nothing to do with your state laws, and everything to do with the Controlled Substances Act, and the fact that cannabis is currently a Schedule 1 controlled substance.

State law is always superseded by federal law, when you go into a federal courtroom, state laws are inadmissible, a federal judge will not listen to the defendant argue that any state law supersedes the Constitution of the United States. So even when states pass medical cannabis laws that specifically do not exempt a medical cannabis user from any other rights, the medical cannabis user still loses their right to own and possess a firearm or ammunition under federal law.

So if you are a medical cannabis patient, or a casual user of cannabis, and you get caught by the federal government on any type of charge, your guns will be used against you to enhance your sentence and give you more time in federal prison.

I know many of you would say that policy is very hypocritical in light of how wineries are treated, or beer manufacturers, but we live in the age of hypocrisy and more than anything, I hate seeing good people get additional time added on their sentence for cannabis cultivation, simply because they were in possession of a firearm, even an antique firearm, that was passed down by a person’s dad and kept simply for sentimental reasons, the federal government will use that as a reason to give you additional time.

Prosecutors call them “enhancements” to a sentence, and they love to tack them on, as it gives them leverage against the defendant who is now facing an otherwise obscenely long period of time in prison, not for the cannabis per se, but because of the guns. Gun enhancements have been a trap used by cops and prosecutors in the war on drugs for decades. But back then, criminals understood the Rules of Engagement, and realized they were carrying an illegal firearm, but now, otherwise law-abiding citizens are at risk because they are doing something completely legal in the state they live in, but because of the conflict with federal laws, and the fact that the federal government IS the Second Amendment, their simple possession of firearms makes them criminals in the eyes of the federal government and courts.

We not only live in a hypocritical time, we live in an odd time in history where we as a society have forgotten that privacy was important and we traded our security for “Likes” on Instagram. I’m sure the police departments and federal government loves the fact that most people don’t need people snitching on them, because they’re snitching on themselves. I can’t tell you how many Instagram profiles I have seen with fields of cannabis or indoor grow rooms that look beautiful, and then pistols, or targets from the range. You know what I’m talking about, as you have seen it as well, and so do the police who monitor social media.

Now I say this not to sound like some conspiracy nut, or to make you paranoid, because I’m not, as everything I’m saying is factual. I am saying this because, a lot of people seem to pick and choose the laws that they want to abide by, as you may like the Second Amendment, but you may also like the fact that your state legalized cannabis and now you feel you have a right to grow or smoke, which you do. But you have to know that you’re giving up one right for another right, because if you keep your guns, the same government that has been lying to you about cannabis for most of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, will also use those guns against you in their court of law.

So in short, if you think that the Second Amendment guarantees you a right to bear arms, you are right. But you are giving up that right as soon as you pick up a cannabis product, medical or not, and consume it.

The ATF has updated form 4473 to include the question 11e, and if you lie on this form, you face a year in federal prison for simply lying, so please keep that in mind if you are trying to purchase a new gun, because if you lie, and they find out, and you are denied the purchase of the firearm, you will be charged for lying on the form in federal court.

“11e.: Are you an unlawful (remember, they’re talking federal laws and not state) user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance? Warning: The use or possession of marijuana remains unlawful under federal law regardless of whether it has been legalized or decriminalized for medical or recreational purposes in the state where you reside.”

You may be wondering, how does this affect the firearms I already own? And I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you no longer have a right to own and possess the guns or even the ammunition, if you are a medical marijuana card holder or even using cannabis recreationally in a legal state. If ever you do get arrested by the federal government, they will confiscate all of your guns because technically in their eyes, your rights to possess even ammunition, evaporated when you chose to break federal law and use a Schedule 1 controlled substance.

If you think this is hypocritical, you’re right. If you think that cannabis growers should have the same rights as people who produce alcohol or run a winery, you’re right again. But in order to be legal instead of just being right, you’re going to have to do something about the federal laws and demand equal rights on the federal level. You’re going to have to fight for the federal legalization of cannabis, just like we have had to fight for the legalization of cannabis on the state level. Because until you change the federal laws, you can’t point to a federal law, or the Second Amendment of the Constitution and say that it gives you freedom, while ignoring the other federal laws that say you don’t have it if you break any of their other laws.

So to all my friends who are proponents of the Second Amendment, please stop compromising you and your families freedom by advertising publicly the weapons you own on a Instagram or Facebook, neatly pictured next to your garden and its products. And while you’re thinking about all this, please take some time and call your representatives, and ask them for a solution to this legal conundrum, as we all have to demand equal rights or we will never see them.

Don’t shoot the messenger and stay safe.

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The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas has ruled that banning cannabis users from possessing firearms is unconstitutional. The court also said the legal principle applies to the sale and transfer of guns. The win was delivered through Paola Connelly, an El Paso resident convicted of separate charges for possessing and transferring a firearm in 2021 while admitting to consuming cannabis.

This recent case in Texas is one of at least four active federal cases surrounding the government’s policy on cannabis and gun ownership.

Under current federal law, cannabis consumers are prohibited from owning or purchasing firearms because they are “an unlawful user or addicted to” a controlled substance. It’s a ban that applies to all cannabis users, including those in states with legal medical and/or recreational cannabis laws.

Another Federal Ruling Against the Ban

Judge Kathleen Cardone granted a motion to reconsider the case, and charges were ultimately dismissed last week. The court had previously issued a conviction, though it said a more recent ruling in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit merited another look. That case, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, found that any firearm restrictions must be consistent with the Second Amendment’s original 1791 ratification.

“Quite simply, there is no historical tradition of denying individuals their Second Amendment rights based solely (or even partially) on the use of marijuana,” the case filing states.

Judge Cardone often disputed the Justice Department’s attempts to fall back on its typical arguments around cannabis consumption and gun ownership, like comparing the ban to laws against operating a firearm under the influence of alcohol or gun possession by “unvirtuous” people. She also cited President Biden’s 2022 decision to mass pardon people with federal cannabis possession charges.

“…Even if Connelly were convicted of simple marijuana possession, that conviction would be expunged by the blanket presidential pardon of all such marijuana possessions that, like Connelly’s, took place before October 6, 2022,” the ruling states, even though Biden’s clemency action didn’t actually expunge records.

Dismantling the DOJ’s Argument in Texas

The court added that, since cannabis possession would only rise to a misdemeanor under federal law, “any historical tradition of disarming ‘unlawful’ individuals does not support disarming Connelly for her alleged marijuana use.” The court challenged the Justice Department’s argument in favor of the ban given that the defendant wasn’t ever convicted of a cannabis offense. Rather, she just admitted to using cannabis.

“In short, the historical tradition of disarming ‘unlawful’ individuals appears to mainly involve disarming those convicted of serious crimes after they have been afforded criminal process,” the ruling reads. “Section 922(g)(3), in contrast, disarms those who engage in criminal conduct that would give rise to misdemeanor charges, without affording them the procedural protections enshrined in our criminal justice system. The law thus deviates from our Nation’s history of firearm regulation.”

The court also challenged the assertion that cannabis users are inherently dangerous, citing the fact that more than 20 states now have legal adult-use cannabis and it’s now a regularly used substance by millions of Americans.

“It strains credulity to believe that taking part in such a widespread practice can render an individual so dangerous or untrustworthy that they must be stripped of their Second Amendment rights,” Cardone said.

Similar Ruling From a Neighboring State

The case follows another recent Oklahoma City ruling in February, where a federal judge similarly ruled that the firearm ban on cannabis users is unconstitutional and must not be enforced by prosecutors.

That case involved Jared Michael Harrison, who was arrested by police in Lawton, Oklahoma after officers found cannabis and a loaded revolver in his car during a traffic stop. Harrison told police he was heading to work at a legal medical cannabis business but did not have a state-issued ID card showing he was authorized to use medicinal cannabis.

Harrison’s attorneys challenged the charge, similarly arguing that the firearm ban is not consistent with the country’s tradition of regulating firearms, also citing New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.

U.S. District Judge Patrick Wyrick similarly rejected the argument that Harrison’s status as a cannabis user “justifies stripping him of his fundamental right to possess a firearm” and ruled that the federal ban on gun ownership “is not a constitutionally permissible means of disarming Harrison.” Wyrick added that cannabis use “not in and of itself a violent, forceful or threatening act.”

The federal court’s full ruling in the Texas case is available here.

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A federal judge in Oklahoma City ruled last week that a federal law that prohibits cannabis users from owning firearms is unconstitutional and must not be enforced by prosecutors. Citing a ruling handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court last year that dramatically expanded gun rights, U.S. District Judge Patrick Wyrick dismissed a federal indictment charging an Oklahoma man with violating the ban, ruling that the prohibition denied the defendant of his right to bear arms guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Under current federal law, people who use cannabis are prohibited from owning or purchasing firearms because they are “an unlawful user of or addicted to” a controlled substance. The ban applies to all cannabis users, including those who use marijuana products that are legal under state law and the Second Amendment, which protects the right to bear arms for all Americans.

In May 2022, Jared Michael Harrison was arrested by police in Lawton, Oklahoma after officers found marijuana and a loaded revolver in his car during a traffic stop. Harrison told police he was on his way to work at a legal medical marijuana business, although he did not have a state-issued identification card authorizing him to use cannabis medicinally. Federal prosecutors subsequently charged Harrison under the nationwide ban on gun ownership by marijuana users.

Harrison’s attorneys challenged the gun prohibition for cannabis users, arguing that the ban is not consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of regulating firearms. The challenge cited a ruling handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court last year in a case known as New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen that set new standards for interpreting the Second Amendment. Under that ruling, gun restrictions enacted by the government must be “consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” 

Judge Cites Recent Supreme Court Ruling

Wyrick, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, agreed with Harrison’s attorneys and ruled on Friday that the ban is unconstitutional, writing that “the mere use of marijuana carries none of the characteristics that the Nation’s history and tradition of firearms regulation supports.” The judge rejected the argument of federal prosecutors that Harrison’s status as a marijuana user “justifies stripping him of his fundamental right to possess a firearm” and ruled that the federal ban on gun ownership “is not a constitutionally permissible means of disarming Harrison.” 

Wyrick also noted that the use of cannabis is “not in and of itself a violent, forceful, or threatening act” and that Oklahoma is one of many states that permit the medicinal use of marijuana, despite the continued illegality of cannabis at the federal. Oklahoma voters legalized medical marijuana in 2018, and the state has more than 2,000 licensed dispensaries where patients can obtain medical cannabis.

Laura Deskin, a public defender representing Harrison, said the ruling was a “step in the right direction for a large number of Americans who deserve the right to bear arms and protect their homes just like any other American.”

Brian Vicente, a founding partner of the cannabis and psychedelics law firm Vicente Sederberg LLP, said last week’s court decision in Oklahoma “is a significant expansion in the rights of cannabis consumers.”

“For decades, and across various states, medical cannabis patients have been asked to choose between participating in their state’s legal cannabis program or owning a firearm,” Vicente wrote in an email. “This federal court decision secures the rights of adults to both use cannabis and own guns and effectively removes the restriction, and associated stigma, that these adults face. This is part of a broader trend of conservative states embracing marijuana policy, with both Alabama and Mississippi establishing medical cannabis programs in 2022 and Oklahoma poised to legalize cannabis on March 7 of this year.”

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The decision comes on the heels of other court cases that have upheld Americans’ access to firearms.

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As I sit here typing out this story from the safety of a bulletproof office—at least I hope to hell that it is—someone, maybe even someone you know will be killed by gun violence. On average, around 106 Americans die each day from a chance meeting with a bullet. Some of the casualties are shot dead by gutless goons while others, sadly enough, turn the firepower on themselves. Despite the vast toll of bodies and bloodshed, however, the American piece construct, one that seemingly embraces the most imbecilic tenets of deep-woods hillbilly philosophy, is to shoot first and never ask questions. No matter how many innocent people succumb to murder and suicide in this pistol-packing nation, the red, white and blue fabric of the governmental hood, all tattered and torn from decades of knock-down drag-out politics against its own, continues blinding a nation with a hefty dose of God-fearing optimism.

After all, many of the victims of gun attacks actually survive—around 95 of the 316 shot a day are merely injured—and of the 74 each day who stick the barrel in their mouths in pursuit of ending it all, 10 of them just end up disfigured. The recipe for relief when guns go wrong in this country is to simply mourn, pray and repeat. And what the politicians refuse to sort out with respect to all of this boom-boom killplay, they give the rest up to God and hope for the best. But that’s never enough. 

“The shots keep getting closer to home,” Rachel, a 33-year-old graphic designer who lives on the outskirts of St. Louis, Missouri, told High Times. “More criminals than anyone else seem to have guns. It’s scary, you never know any more if you’re going to get killed just sitting on the porch.” 

Nevertheless, the so-called greatest nation in the world keeps its finger firmly on the trigger. It has to. Why, if the forefathers of the good ole US of A thought it necessary way back when to give every citizen the right to pack heat, then by God, the politicians, both the corrupt and non-confrontational, should never stop fighting to ensure that every citizen is clenching a firearm in their fists as soon as they pop out of the womb. Unfortunately, our gun-wielding society has officially lost its damn mind. What was intended as a right to self-protection (or perhaps more controversially, create a standing army, not give everyone the right to carry weapons just because) has since mutated into the dimwitted armament of domestic terrorists. We’ve now got weak-minded, undisciplined, pimple-faced, pseudo-anarchists angry at the world shooting up schools at a rate that crossed the line of acceptability a long damn time ago. The unarmed has become the minority. 

It’s to the point where you can’t even get into an old-fashioned screaming match on the street without fear that someone might get their feelings hurt bad enough to whip out a gun and start shooting. To say it’s the wild west out there would be a gross understatement. It’s more like Thunderdome. The depravity surrounding gun violence continues to spiral further into profound depths of extreme dipshittery—experiencing an increase of 20% since 2019— yet more states are passing laws making it easier, not harder for civilians to carry a gun. Over half the nation now allows adults as young as 18-years-old to carry a concealed weapon without a permit. 

Yep, without. 

Alabama is the latest state to make gun ownership as easy as catching a cold. It’s just one of many jurisdictions across the country where it is now perfectly acceptable to pack heat—although some restrictions apply—but don’t you dare pack a bowl. Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Tennessee, Texas and Utah (as well as others) have, over the years, relaxed their respective gun laws to allow people 18-years-old and up, those barely old enough to wipe their own ass, to forgo the licensing process once required to procure a firearm. Yet, strangely enough, these states don’t want their citizens, not even those presumably old enough to understand the basics of bathroom hygiene, to have the same kind of freedom when it comes to weed. No sir, anyone in these places who gets caught in possession of a little grass, rest assured the courts will be eagerly waiting to make their life a living hell. In Alabama, for example, getting caught with any amount of marijuana can result in a year in jail and fines up to $6,000. Even if a pot offender gets a slap on the wrist, that doesn’t mean he or she will escape jail and get off with a polite warning. 

Those who get wrapped up in a pot charge, even low-level smears, where the prosecution pushes for probation rather than incarceration can still end up being forced to attend drug and alcohol classes, do community service and surrender their driver’s license privileges as part of their probationary terms. It’s how the man grinds drug offenders to a pulp through the gears of the system. These people may have seemingly caught a break in the eyes of outsiders, but they must still adhere to all sorts of nagging stipulations, including pass random drug tests during their probation period or else run the risk of being sent to jail to fulfill their sentence. Cages are the alternative for those without the money to pay steep restitution to the state for breaking their drug laws. Hey pal, pay up or get locked up. Your choice. 

Those parts of the country where guns are widely accepted—even praised, third only to God and country—yet pot use is still considered a threat to the well-being of the public is about as backasswards as it gets. Even if some of the negative consequences of pot (legal or otherwise) that’s been reported over the years ended up being true, a stoned society is presumably still a heck of a lot less risky than one that is armed for no reason.

Are we to believe that just because some gray-headed slave owners from 1787 penned a document one night over a few stiff drinks stating that the people should all have the right to keep and bear arms, deadly weapons earn a free pass from here to eternity?

George Washington and the rest of the Constitution crew didn’t foresee that the gun industry would eventually modify the musket used in the American Revolution, turning it into a fearsome killing machine capable of firing 300 rounds of “die, you bastard, die” per minute. Just like they didn’t anticipate that cannabis growers would eventually produce weed strong enough to make people call 911. Not even the lawmakers responsible for banning weed in 1937 could have made that prediction. To be fair, we’ve made some rather impressive technological advancements over the years, some of which, had the founding fathers been made privy to prior to signing, may have inspired them to make a giant paper airplane of the Constitution, soak it in kerosene and fly it straight into a candle. Or perhaps they would have simply decreed, “The people have the right to do whatever the hell they want; they’re going to fuck it up anyway.” 

Fast forward more than two-hundred years and the lawmakers of these tumultuous times have witnessed the death and destruction, the ridiculousness of holding on to pistol heritage, and yet the only heavy hand they continue to hold firm is on cannabis prohibition. Let’s be clear: Marijuana consumption doesn’t kill, and if there is a rising death toll anywhere because of it, the black market perpetuated through discrepancies between state and federal drug laws is ultimately to blame.

Many gun advocates argue that law-abiding citizens aren’t inclined to commit crime, so arming them, even without a permit, is absolutely no danger to society. Fair enough. It could also be argued that those philosophies equally apply to the average cannabis consumer. Give them the right to buy and possess marijuana just like alcohol, and most won’t cause any dust ups with the law. “I’ve never been in trouble for anything other than weed,” Dimitri, a 24-year-old from Greenville, Indiana tells us. “I’d be considered a model citizen if it wasn’t for these dumb pot laws.”

Meanwhile, law enforcement continues to piss and moan about the dangers of legal marijuana. Some of the latest reports, much like the previous reports we’ve all read over the years, have connected legal weed to everything from increased violence to human trafficking. The boys in blue also like to voice concerns about the distribution of firearms related to illicit marijuana trafficking, much of what continues to thrive within the gray areas of legalization. However, as much as they would like to convince the average citizen that weed is the culprit in the undoing of America, an affinity for a plant, legal or otherwise, is not what’s driving the nation’s lust for guns. No sir, we’ve been obsessed with gat machismo a long time. There are presently around 393 million weapons in the hands of civilian Americans, with three in ten adults claiming gun ownership. All of this equates to roughly 121 guns per 100 residents. Gun control laws have continued to weaken across the nation, and now more young men barely out of diapers are freely permitted to keep firepower on their belts to supplement the testosterone leading them to fight or fuck anything that moves. This is, without question, a dangerous step toward mayhem.

“They should probably raise the age on that,” Chris, a 48-year-old gun owner from Lexington, Kentucky, told High Times. “I’ve seen younger guys get into some trouble that probably wouldn’t have happened had it not been for them having a gun. I worked with one years ago, he was like 21, who showed his pistol during a road rage incident, and they came down on him hard. Guys are just too hot-headed at that age. But they’re [the government] never going to change that. How can they say you can’t own a gun until you’re 25 and still ship them off to war at 18?”

Listen, I don’t like guns. I’ve never owned one and never felt that I needed to arm myself, even if it was, as the gun rights people often claim, just for personal protection. And I come from the rural Midwest, too, the redneck capital of the world. Everyone has guns. It was even perfectly acceptable, at least in our obscure part of the country, to pull into school with a firearm in your vehicle if it was fitted with a gun rack. A lot of high school students in the late 80s, albeit typically the same ones who belonged to FFA, showed up with hunting rifles in tow, but none of them ever dreamed of bringing one into the classroom and opening fire on the other students. Not even when fist fights broke out in the parking lot after class—and that happened more times than I can count—did the gun owners reach for a boom stick to get the upper hand on their opponent. They just took the ass beating. Win or lose, everyone back then lived to fight another day.

Coming from this culture, I’ve never been the kind of guy to impede on someone’s right to do anything. Not even own a firearm. If guns were your thing, so be it. I didn’t want people trying to take away the things that I enjoyed, so giving them the same courtesy was my way of maintaining balance. Fair was fair. But that was before. Now, fewer gun restrictions have put more firearms in the streets and into the hands of the wrong people, and not everyone is as hesitant to reach for them as they were back in the day. At the same time, the federal government, still awfully hesitant to do much more about the nation’s gun problem than offer cheap condolences, remains hellbent on keeping nationwide cannabis prohibition intact, even while states move in the opposite direction. If we, as Americans, must live in a nation where we’re always at risk of staring down the business end of a gun, we should never need to concern ourselves with the legal repercussions of possessing a plant that’s legal for adults in over half the nation. Times have changed, like it or not, and the government should respond accordingly. 

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With Republicans now running the House, weed reform focuses on narrower issues for medical marijuana patients.

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A federal judge last week threw out a lawsuit brought by a top Florida official challenging a rule that prohibits medical marijuana patients from purchasing and acquiring guns. 

The News Service of Florida reports that U.S. District Judge Allen Winsor “issued a 22-page ruling [on Friday] that granted a request by the U.S. Department of Justice to dismiss the lawsuit, which alleged the prohibitions violate Second Amendment rights.”

The crux of the lawsuit, which was filed in April by Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, centered around a discrepancy between state and federal law. 

As the News Service explained:

“Under federal law, possession of marijuana is illegal; under a 2016 Florida constitutional amendment, hundreds of thousands of patients are able to buy medical marijuana. Federal laws also bar certain people from buying and possessing guns, including people who use drugs illegally. The lawsuit, filed in April, alleged the federal prohibitions ‘forbid Floridians from possessing or purchasing a firearm on the sole basis that they are state law-abiding medical marijuana patients.’”

Fried, a Democrat who at the time was running for governor of Florida, said in her announcement of the lawsuit that she was “suing the Biden Administration because people’s rights are being limited.”

Medical marijuana is legal. Guns are legal,” Fried said in the announcement, which came on 4/20. “This is about people’s rights and their freedoms to responsibly have both.”

But in his ruling on Friday, Winsor disagreed.

“In 2016, Florida stopped criminalizing the medical use of marijuana. Many people refer to this change as Florida’s ‘legalizing’ medical marijuana, but Florida did no such thing. It couldn’t. ‘Under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, state laws cannot permit what federal law prohibits,’ and federal law still prohibits possession of marijuana — for medical purposes or otherwise,” Winsor wrote, as quoted by the News Service of Florida.

NBC News, reporting on Fried’s lawsuit in April, said that it “[targeted] a federal form that asks whether the gun buyer is an unlawful user of drugs and specifies that marijuana is illegal under federal law.”

“A person allowed by the state to use marijuana must then check “yes,” which results in denial of the purchase. Lying by checking ‘no’ runs the risk of a five-year prison sentence for making a false statement,” NBC explained at the time. “Fried, whose office oversees concealed weapons permits and regulates some aspects of medical marijuana, argues in her lawsuit that the form violates the Second Amendment rights of lawful medical marijuana patients and runs afoul of a congressional budget prohibition on federal agents’ interfering with state-sanctioned cannabis laws.”

Fried was a candidate for governor this year, but she fell to Charlie Crist in the Democratic primary held in August. 

She has long been a champion for cannabis reform.

Crist, who is challenging Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis in Tuesday’s election, has pledged to legalize recreational cannabis in the Sunshine State if he is elected.

Crist also announced last month that he would “expunge criminal records for those arrested on misdemeanors or third-degree felonies related to the drug if he were elected governor next year,” according to the Tampa Bay Times.

DeSantis, who is heavily favored to win on Tuesday, has said previously that legalization will not happen on his watch.

“Not while I’m governor,” DeSantis, widely regarded as a possible Republican presidential candidate, said in 2019. “I mean look, when that is introduced with teenagers and young people, I think it has a really detrimental effect to their well being and their maturity.”

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