Florida’s agriculture commissioner is appealing a recent federal judge’s order dismissing a lawsuit she and other plaintiffs filed challenging a prohibition against medical marijuana patients purchasing firearms.
Commissioner of Agriculture and Consumer Services Nikki Fried’s office said she filed a request with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a decision by district Judge Allen Winsor. The district judge dismissed her lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives over federal cannabis policies.
Currently, federal policies ban Florida residents from buying firearms if they are medical cannabis patients. Under Florida law, residents can legally purchase marijuana for treatment of medical ailments, but Winsor issued an order Nov. 4 concluding that the Second Amendment does not allow medical marijuana users to buy firearms.
The plaintiffs also contend the Rohrabacher-Farr Amendment, a congressional provision that prevents the Justice Department from spending funds to prevent states from enforcing their medical marijuana programs, protects medical marijuana patients’ right to possess firearms.
But Winsor rejected that argument as well, concluding that federal laws against marijuana use and possession still apply.
“... Habitual drug users are analogous to other groups the government has historically found too dangerous to have guns,” the district judge said. “The historical tradition of keeping guns from those the government fairly views as dangerous – like alcoholics and the mentally ill – is sufficiently analogous to modern laws keeping guns from habitual users of controlled substances.”
But Fried maintains that medical cannabis cardholders in Florida can’t be denied constitutional rights accorded to other people.
“As I said when I filed this lawsuit, no patient should have to choose between their medicine and employment, or a roof over their head, or access to capital – or any of their constitutional rights,” Fried said in a statement emailed to the Florida Record.
Federal cannabis policies remain “irrational, inconsistent and incoherent,” she said.
Fried has a record of advocating on cannabis issues and has called for recreational cannabis legalization in Florida.