The Justice Division’s characterization of medical marijuana sufferers as uniquely harmful and unfit to own firearms in its new response to a lawsuit uncovered an “insulting” and antiquated perspective, Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried advised Marijuana Second on Tuesday.
DOJ had been anticipated to file a movement to dismiss the lawsuit, which Fried filed in April alongside sufferers who had been denied firearms as a result of they use medical hashish. However the content material of the in depth memorandum connected to the division’s movement, which was filed on Monday’s court-imposed deadline, got here as a shock.
The Biden administration’s Justice Division didn’t simply maintain the road by denying the therapeutic advantages of marijuana, it additionally made the case that individuals who use hashish could be too “harmful to belief” to own firearms. The memo’s reefer madness-era rhetoric has dismayed advocates and amplified frustrations over the president’s unfulfilled guarantees to enact modest hashish reforms.
“I discover it very insulting,” Fried stated of the DOJ’s response. “You’re calling sufferers which have most cancers which can be utilizing medical marijuana harmful. You’re telling veterans who’re utilizing medical marijuana [that they’re] harmful. I believe that they missed the ball right here—and it’s very disconcerting that that is the course that they took.”
“There’s so many people for years—for many years—who’ve been preventing in opposition to this stereotype of marijuana customers,” the commissioner, who’s operating in a Democratic gubernatorial main for an opportunity to problem incumbent Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) in November, stated. “To see the Division of Justice put it down in a 40-page memo defending their movement to dismiss may be very disappointing.”
It wasn’t simply DOJ’s characterization of hashish shoppers that’s confronted criticism. In its try and justify the continued federal coverage prohibiting individuals who use marijuana from buying weapons, the division additionally cited questionable case legislation going again to the seventeenth century.
Discriminatory gun bans in opposition to teams like Native Individuals, Catholics and panhandlers had been among the many “analogous” examples DOJ included in its memo to defend the present-day marijuana prohibition. The case law-based argument was particularly attentive to the plaintiffs’s revised grievance that accounted for a current U.S. Supreme Courtroom ruling on gun restrictions in New York.
That ruling usually creates the next normal for insurance policies that search to impose restrictions on gun rights. Total, the Courtroom stated that any such restrictions should be in step with the historic context of the Second Modification’s authentic 1791 ratification.
DOJ, referencing the questionable bans from the previous, argued in its new submitting that “the historic custom embodied by these legal guidelines continues as we speak, with a majority of states ‘limit[ing] the suitable of routine drug abusers or alcoholics to own or carry firearms.”
The memo goes on to say that hashish “causes vital psychological and bodily impairments that make it harmful for an individual to own firearm.”
Fried stated that DOJ’s place “actually exhibits a disconnect between the place we’re in our nation and the place the legal guidelines are.”
As attorneys for the plaintiffs put together to answer to the movement to dismiss, advocates proceed to place strain on President Joe Biden to take significant government motion on hashish reform, which the division explicitly acknowledged in its memo that he has the authority to do.
The commissioner stated that it’s unclear to what extent, if in any respect, the DOJ memo was reviewed by the White Home. However in any case, she stated that she hopes the lawsuit additional encourages the president to behave.
“This very clearly states that he has the facility to take action,” Fried stated. “Hopefully he’ll see that his division is giving him, once more, the authority to take action and laying that out. Hopefully he’ll take that authority and reside as much as the guarantees that he made to the individuals.”
In a press launch on Tuesday, the commissioner said that she “filed this lawsuit to deliver consideration to how the federal authorities’s inconsistent and illogical hashish insurance policies are creating not solely confusion, however precise hurt.”
Disillusioned that @TheJusticeDept moved to dismiss our case, and that they’d perpetuate such dangerous and offensive prejudicial stereotypes that hashish customers are harmful or mentally in poor health to take action. We MUST hold preventing for equitable legalization.
My full assertion 👇 https://t.co/knxtbcYHjk pic.twitter.com/aYo0Wpb6P1
— Commissioner Nikki Fried (@NikkiFriedFL) August 9, 2022
“Sadly, the problem raised in our lawsuit is simply one of many many dilemmas posed that affects a large variety of Floridians and much more sufferers nationwide,” she stated. “Although this explicit pathway meant to maneuver much-needed hashish reform ahead could be minimize off, I’ll by no means cease searching for outside-the-box methods we will additional this struggle till we obtain full and equitable legalization.”
DOJ’s memo on its movement to dismiss additionally challenges Fried’s standing within the lawsuit, contending that her function as the pinnacle of the state’s Agriculture Division doesn’t make her a consultant of the state to the extent that she will declare harm. The submitting stated that the state legal professional normal could be a extra acceptable official to that finish.
Florida Legal professional Normal Ashley Moody (R) has made her opposition to marijuana legalization clear, although, and the commissioner stated that she hasn’t approached the opposite workplace for be a part of the lawsuit.
“She’s, sadly, preoccupied with suing the Biden administration on different points,” Fried stated, referencing lawsuits that Moody has filed or joined that concern different hot-button topics like immigration and COVID vaccine insurance policies.
Requested whether or not she would pursue the hashish sufferers’ gun rights litigation in opposition to the administration if elected governor, Fried stated she is “dedicated to this concern.”
“No matter the place it sits within the commissioner’s workplace and after I’m elected governor, ensuring that we signal on to the lawsuit to indicate extra help, sure, we’d completely do it,” she stated.
In the intervening time, nevertheless, the present federal coverage persists, making it so individuals are denied gun purchases in the event that they’re sincere about their hashish use whereas filling out a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) background examine type—no matter state legislation.
As Fried beforehand advised Marijuana Second, the lawsuit at hand is just not about increasing gun rights, per se. It’s a matter of constitutionality that she and different key allies within the gun reform motion really feel would bolster public security if the case in the end goes of their favor.
Supporters of the lawsuit argue that the ATF requirement successfully creates an incentive for hashish shoppers to both lie on the shape, purchase a gun on the illicit market or just forgo a constitutional proper.
In 2020, ATF issued an advisory particularly concentrating on Michigan that requires gun sellers to conduct federal background checks on all unlicensed gun patrons as a result of it stated the state’s hashish legal guidelines had enabled “routine marijuana customers” and different disqualified people to acquire firearms illegally.
Fried introduced the lawsuit alongside two medical marijuana sufferers within the state, in addition to Neill Franklin, a retired police officer and former government director of the Legislation Enforcement Motion Partnership (LEAP) who has declined to make use of medical hashish regardless of its therapeutic worth for ache he experiences due to the potential gun rights ramifications.
One other part of the authorized problem relies on a singular interpretation of a congressional spending invoice rider generally known as the Rohrabacher-Farr Modification, which prevents the Justice Division from utilizing federal funds to intervene within the implementation of state medical hashish applications.
By stopping individuals like Franklin from utilizing medical marijuana with out risking the lack of their proper to purchase firearms, the federal authorities is successfully violating that rider by blocking Florida from including new sufferers to develop its program, in accordance with the swimsuit.
DOJ stated in its new memo that Franklin doesn’t have standing within the case as a result of he hasn’t confronted any particular harm. It additionally stated that the protections of the Rohrabacher-Farr Modification are restricted, and it identified that it hasn’t spent {dollars} to intervene within the implementation of Florida’s medical hashish program.
There have been earlier efforts in Congress to particularly shield medical hashish sufferers in opposition to shedding their proper to buy and possess weapons, however these efforts haven’t been enacted.
In the meantime, in Florida, a brand new industry-led marketing campaign filed a marijuana legalization initiative on Monday that they hope will go earlier than voters on the state’s 2024 poll.