After Minnesota became the 23rd state to legalize recreational marijuana last week, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) issued a familiar warning. Minnesotans who might be inclined to consume cannabis supplied by state-licensed stores, the ATF office in St. Paul said, should recognize that doing so means sacrificing the constitutional right to armed self-defense.
That puzzling predicament, the result of restrictions imposed by the Gun Control Act of 1968, is untenable in a country where most states allow medical or recreational marijuana use and two-thirds of adults support full legalization. Yet even though President Joe Biden says cannabis consumers should not be treated as criminals, his administration is desperately defending a policy that punishes them by taking away their Second Amendment rights.
