Patient Education ►
Patient Education
Cannabis and
Second Amendment Rights
by Molly Kopczynski, contributing writer
My first encounter with guns in Missouri was when I moved here from California at age 14. I was sitting in class when I heard an announcement over the loudspeaker that a shotgun had been retrieved from the parking lot and that the owner should come claim it. It was hunting season, and this was a regular occurrence.
Years later, I worked in car rentals, where it wasn’ t uncommon to find a forgotten firearm in the glove box. The procedure wasn’ t to notify law enforcement or begin an investigation. We simply called the previous renter and asked whether they wanted to come pick up their gun. Most of the time, they did.
Those experiences shaped how I viewed Missouri’ s approach to firearms. Then I entered the cannabis industry, where I learned that forgetting a firearm in a rental car didn’ t automatically cost someone their gun rights, but consuming state-legal cannabis could.
In 2021, Missouri’ s medical cannabis program became operational, and I was working as a budtender. I heard so many stories from patients who had served years in prison for cannabis-related convictions that also involved firearm charges. You could see the frustration and cognitive dissonance when they talked about it. Many found it difficult to reconcile spending years in prison for possessing cannabis and a firearm while standing inside a state-licensed dispensary, where armed security guards were legally protecting a product that, years earlier, could have been the basis of their conviction. The difference was that they had possessed both cannabis and a firearm at a different point in history, before Missouri’ s laws changed.
If you’ re licensed to cultivate, transport, or sell cannabis, firearms have long been an accepted part of the industry through professional security. Yet for years, an otherwise law-abiding private citizen using state-legal cannabis could lose federal firearm rights simply because they consumed cannabis.
Key Points of the Recent Supreme Court Ruling on Constitutional Rights:
● The ruling reinforces that the Second Amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms.
● It clarifies that possessing marijuana does not automatically disqualify someone from exercising their Second Amendment rights.
Missouri has consistently demonstrated strong support for the Second Amendment. In 2021, the state enacted the Second Amendment Preservation Act( SAPA), declaring certain federal firearm restrictions invalid in Missouri and authorizing civil penalties of up to $ 50,000 against law enforcement agencies that knowingly enforced covered federal firearm laws. Although SAPA was ultimately struck down by the federal courts, it offered a clear glimpse into Missouri’ s philosophy regarding firearm rights.
On June 18, 2026, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives( ATF) announced that it is reviewing the impact of United States v. Hemani, in which the U. S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that prosecuting Hemani for possessing a firearm while regularly using cannabis violated the Second Amendment under the circumstances of his case. The decision raises significant constitutional questions about applying a blanket firearm prohibition to cannabis consumers.
With 40 states operating comprehensive medical cannabis programs, the decision reflects a reality that much of the country has already accepted – – millions of Americans legally use cannabis under state law.
On December 18, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing increased research into medical marijuana and cannabidiol while initiating the process to move qualifying medical cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III under the Controlled Substances Act. However, when the administration addressed the Hemani case before the Supreme Court, Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that the rescheduling effort should not affect the litigation because the law in effect at the time of the alleged offense remained controlling.
In other words, even while the federal government was acknowledging accepted medical use for cannabis, it initially maintained that the existing firearm prohibition should remain enforceable.
18 August 2026