On Oct. 20, the New York Times reported that the Supreme Court announced on Sept. 20 that it is considering a Second Amendment challenge to the federal law that bars drug users or addicts from owning firearms. The case tests the statute used to convict former U.S. President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, last year.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit found this law unconstitutional in most cases and added that it could only be applied to those “presently impaired.” In response, President Donald Trump’s administration urged the justices to reverse this ruling, saying that the law should be upheld because habitual drug users with firearms presented “unique dangers” to society and raised the prospect of “armed, hostile encounters with police officers.”
This is the latest firearms case to come before the court since its 2022 decision expanding gun rights. The case will require the justices to apply the court’s recently adopted test for evaluating challenges to gun control measures. Also established in 2022, this test requires courts to strike down such laws unless they are “consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
Does SMOKING pot affect our decision-making?
Research published in Frontiers in Psychology shows that chronic cannabis users exhibit impairments on laboratory measures of decision making, which reflect risk factors for initiation and continued use of cannabis. Repeated exposure to delta 9-tetrahydrocannabinol, the primary psychoactive constituent of cannabis, alters activity at endogenous cannabinoid type 1 receptors. Cannabinoid type 1 receptors are densely distributed in brain structures involved in decision making and reward learning, including the hippocampus, amygdala, cingulate cortex, prefrontal cortex, cerebellum, dorsal striatum, and ventral tegmental area.
ARE THERE ANY STATISTICS LINKING MARIJUANA USE WITH PHYSICAL VIOLENCE?
A 2020 study from the American Journal of Psychiatry examined both cannabis use and the perpetration of physical violence in a sample of youths and young adults less than 30 years old. Based on a meta-analysis of 30 study arms, with a sample of 296,815 participants, they found a moderate association between cannabis use and the perpetration of physical violence. The observed association they found remained unchanged across study designs, including after adjustment for confounding factors (e.g., socioeconomic factors, other substance use).
Measuring violence is, of course, very complex and multifactorial; however, the results of this meta-analysis indicate that cannabis use among youths is moderately associated with physical violence. This finding is derived from studies that yield a large sample of adolescents and young adults and show no publication bias.
Now what?
The Associated Press stated that arguments on this topic will likely take place in early 2026, with a decision expected early that summer. Even with the administration’s support for citizens’ Second Amendment rights, AP reported that government attorneys argued that the ban is justifiable.
For now, we wait and see what the conclusion will be in the summer of 2026.