Justice Department seeks to revoke drug user's Second Amendment rights
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
March 2, 2026
On Saturday, the Associated Press reported on the attempts of the US Justice Department to deny gun ownership to those who use marijuana -- or at least to those who use marijuana too frequently as far as the government is concerned1. One wants to weep when considering what this says about the Christian Science madness of Americans when it comes to drugs. We as a country are determined to punish people to the ends of the earth -- in all sorts of extrajudicial ways limited only by the spiteful imagination of scapegoating racists -- in the superstitious and antiscientific belief that drugs can be considered to be good or bad without regard for circumstances. And so a marijuana-smoking pain patient undergoing chemotherapy must lose their Second Amendment rights so that we can punish a minority demographic whom we, from our alcohol-friendly thrones, have judged to be "wasters." And so drug-bashing continues to be the tool by which the majority punishes the minority in America, by associating them with a hated drug and then punishing them accordingly.
...of drug users, that is.
Speaking of alcohol: if we are to limit human rights based on the substances that one chooses to ingest, then surely beer drinkers should be the first to lose their rights to guns, given the way that the alcoholic intoxication which Americans glorify today in drinking games and movies completely destroys the power of judgment in the most sane and sober mind. But then drug prohibition is all about strategic branding. The New York Times tells us that we have a problem with marijuana. And so they publish the stories necessary to establish that "fact." And yet any bruised housewife knows that Americans have a far greater problem with alcohol -- to say nothing of the fact that 1 in 4 American women are dependent upon Big Pharma drugs for life. How's that for a drug problem? Indeed, how's that for the greatest pharmacological dystopia of all times? And yet the enthusiastic tipplers on the editorial board of America's newspaper of record are not exactly inciting panic on that head. Indeed, this real-life version of Stepford Wives seems to be a nonproblem in their view.
As for hemp (er, I mean marijuana), it is clear that all the avoidable problems with that drug stem from drug prohibition in general and the fact that marijuana in particular is still illegal to grow for oneself. Think of that, America has made it illegal to grow the plants of which politicians disapprove. This is a crime against humanity, to deny human beings the use of the plant medicines of Mother Nature, above all in a country founded on the principles of natural law, according to which we all have a right to the use of the land "and all that lies therein."
This is why it is so frustrating to write against drug prohibition because sentences like the latter should say it all, and yet they somehow don't. If freedom means anything at all, it means the right to take care of one's own health as we see fit and to access the medical bounty of Mother Nature for that purpose. So the fact that drug prohibition denies us those rights should read to any freedom lover as a blatant and obvious evil. And yet after over a century of drug-bashing propaganda and the total censorship of positive drug use in the media, Americans have given up on their fundamental rights when it comes to drugs. They can no longer see evil as evil.
This makes me understand why Nietzsche was so often repeating the biblical adjuration, "let those who have ears, hear!" For what can one do after they have clearly demonstrated a fact so basic as 1+1=2 and yet the pundits-that-be are completely unmoved? The only thing left for the writer is to vent one's frustration in the form of a scriptural appeal for an open mind, as who should say: "I have presented you with the facts of the case: would you please allow yourself to consider them from the point of view of a freedom-loving citizen of planet Earth?"
Here let me add a word of advice for those creating a new constitution after witnessing the failure of America's own document to safeguard the most basic of human freedoms as noted above. In order to safeguard against future demagogues, a drug-neutral constitution will clearly state that it will be illegal to punish people based solely on the substances that they choose to ingest. This is clearly what the Supreme Court case above is all about: punishing people based on the substances that they choose to ingest (an algorithm, which, as already noted, would necessarily entail the punishment of drinkers first and foremost were it applied disinterestedly to the use of all mind-affecting substances).
Such punishments remind me of the many other injustices meted out to drug users and drug suspects in the name of fighting drugs, particularly as documented by Richard Lawrence Miller in "Drug Warriors and their Prey." One thinks of drug testing in particular, which throws us out of the workforce, not for impairment, but rather for using substances of which politicians disapprove.
As Miller writes:
"There are three ways to survive: gainful employment, welfare, or crime. By losing the possibility of employment, drug users must resort to welfare or crime. Yet Drug Warriors seek even to cut off welfare, as through evictions from public housing in Missouri." --Richard Lawrence Miller, Drug Warriors and Their Prey: From Police Power to Police State2
The diabolical creativity of prohibitionists in concocting ever-new punishments for drug users is reminiscent of the facility with which Protestants came up with ever-new punishments for Catholics in 16th- and 17th-century England, Scotland, and Ireland3. In fact, Drug Warriors seem to be stealing a page from that history, insofar as gun ownership was one of the many privileges that were taken away from Catholics during that time. This comparison with the past is more revealing than might at first appear, for drug use has inspired entire religions, from which it follows that the outlawing of drugs is the outlawing, not just of one specific religion, but of the religious impulse itself. And who is doing the persecution today? Why, Protestant Christians, of course, just as in the past. (See "Christian Nationalism and the Birth of the War on Drugs" by Andrew Monteith.4) It is also interesting to note that Protestant missionaries were the ones who demonized opium use in China in the 19th century with big fat lies, and that the Catholic missionaries did not participate in the baseless fearmongering. (See "The Truth about Opium" by William H. Brereton.5)
I am going to end this essay without chiming in on the topic of gun ownership itself, whether it is a right worth having in the first place. My point is merely that no right available to me as a citizen should be denied me because I use a substance of which politicians disapprove, especially when such use is for the purpose of improving my psychological, mental and/or spiritual health. I do have a bone to pick with gun advocates, however, because their support of gun ownership is almost always completely unprincipled. By remaining silent about drug prohibition -- or even supporting it -- they are saying in effect that the right to gun ownership is more obvious and sacred than our right to the bounty of Mother Nature which grows unbidden around us -- and that is a laughable conclusion that I will deny to my dying day. How can we human beings have a greater right to a clunky metallic product created by human beings in the last few seconds of geological time than we have to the plants and fungi that have grown at our very feet ever since Homo sapiens first appeared on earth hundreds of thousands of years ago?
AFTERWORD
I've never been a fan of the NRA for the reasons cited above. Any pro-gun group should be demanding an immediate end to drug prohibition which outlaws a far more obvious right than our right to guns: namely, our right to the healing medicines of our choice. Moreover, the outlawing of those medicines has led to gun violence of historic proportions that has devastated minority communities around the world. The last thing we need is easier access to firearms in a world in which we have "weaponized" guns, so to speak, thanks to the violence-producing policy of drug prohibition.
And yet the Associated Press is right: the Supreme Court case mentioned above makes for strange bedfellows. I find myself in agreement with the Second Amendment Foundation when it complains on the NRA's behalf:
"The fundamental right to keep and bear arms was never denied to people who occasionally partook in such drugs — unless they were carrying arms while actively intoxicated."
See? Even conservatives can speak sensibly about drugs when they have a strategic end in view, in this case maintaining the sacrosanct nature of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution. If only such groups were as vocal on behalf of the many other amendments (first, fourth, fifth, sixth, etc.) whose effects have been nullified in the name of Drug War hysteria.
WHAT NEXT?
What new Machiavellian punishments will the prohibitionists think of next? Here are some potential future penalties for marijuana smokers who overindulge in the eyes of their government. The following list is inspired by actual punishments meted out to Catholics as part of the Penal Laws of yore in England, Ireland, and Scotland. Notice that all these punishments make exactly as much "sense" as denying marijuana users the right to gun ownership -- or in other words, all these rules are completely arbitrary and based on prejudices and presuppositions.
A "frequent" marijuana user may not...
1) Own a horse worth more than 5 pounds.
2) Act as guardian to an infant.
3) Marry a non-marijuana user.
In short, the modern drug user is viewed by modern Protestant Drug Warriors just as the Protestants of yore used to view Catholics. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia online at Catholic.org:
"The law presumed every Catholic to be faithless, disloyal, and untruthful, assumed him to exist only to be punished, and the ingenuity of the Legislature was exhausted in discovering new methods of repression."6
AI CENSORSHIP
I tried to use my iStock account to generate some AI images to accompany the above essay. And so I entered descriptions like "guns and marijuana" and "guns and drugs" -- and each time I was told that the terms were not acceptable. Here is my vain protest letter to Getty Images:
Your AI censorship is not appreciated. I have a website discussing the evils of drug prohibition and your AI will not generate images if the description includes words like "drugs." You should list the names of who programs your AI so we can know whom we have to thank for this new form of intolerance.
Let's arrest drug warriors, confiscate their houses, and deny them jobs in America -- until such time as they renounce their belief in the demonstrably ruinous policy of substance prohibition.
Ug! Fire bad!
There were 4,731 fire-related deaths in America in 2023.
Learn more at the Partnership for a Death Free America.
America never ended prohibition. It just redirected prohibition from alcohol to all of alcohol's competitors.
Daily opium use is no more outrageous than daily antidepressant use. In fact, it's less outrageous. It's a time-honored practice and can be stopped with a little effort and ingenuity, whereas it is almost impossible to get off some antidepressants because they alter brain chemistry.
Saying "Fentanyl kills" is philosophically equivalent to saying "Fire bad!" Both statements are attempts to make us fear dangerous substances rather than to learn how to use them as safely as possible for human benefit.
My impression has been that the use of cocaine over a long time can bring about lasting improvement..." --Sigmund Freud, On Cocaine, 1884
In a free world, almost all depressed individuals could do WITHOUT doctors: these adult human beings could handle their own depression with the informed intermittent use of a wide variety of psychoactive substances.
If religious liberty existed, we would be able to use the inspiring phenethylamines created by Alexander Shulgin in the same way and for the same reasons as the Vedic people of India used soma.
Magazines like Psychology Today continue to publish feel-good articles about depression which completely ignore the fact that we have outlawed all drugs that could end depression in a heartbeat.
Alcohol makes me sleepy. But NOT coca wine. The wine gives you an upbeat feeling of controlled energy, without the jitters of coffee and without the fury of steroids. It increases rather than dulls mental focus.
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