Ron DeSantis believes gun owners should be able to use medical marijuana

Image via AP.

Gov. Ron DeSantis said Friday that he believes there is no incompatibility between the use of medical marijuana and the right to bear arms.

Asked about whether cannabis patients have 2nd Amendment rights, the Governor sided with marijuana users on constitutional grounds.

“I don’t think that that’s constitutional, to be honest with you,” he said regarding the current perceived incompatibility. “I think if you’re using a legal product, I don’t see how that can nullify a constitutional right.”

“I think that the only way that Second Amendment rights are (abridged is) criminal felony conviction and adjudication for mental illness. And I think those two are there,” DeSantis said. “If somebody’s using something that’s (a) legal product, there’s not anything in the constitution that would justify doing that” ban.

Interestingly, medical marijuana and its compatibility with firearms ownership was an issue broached legally by a prominent DeSantis rival: Nikki Fried, the former Agriculture Commissioner who now chairs the Florida Democratic Party. In 2022, Fried sued the Joe Biden administration on behalf of Florida cannabis patients, challenging that prohibition.

Guidance from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives dating back to 2011 warns federal firearm licensees against selling to a known user of or someone who is “addicted to marijuana.” Prospective gun owners must answer questions about cannabis use honestly or face potential criminal penalties.

DeSantis’ position on this issue may surprise some, given his latter-day skepticism about cannabis as a medical product. Recently on the trail, he suggested that medical needs constituted a “pretext” for usage from Florida’s patients.

Deepening the narrative was a recent CNN piece that charged the Governor with not “draining the swamp” of Florida’s cannabis market, instead accepting support from the same industry he had called a “cartel” early in his first term.

DeSantis has been all over the place rhetorically during not just this campaign but his political career when it comes to cannabis. In Iowa this summer, he said he opposed legalization because “they can throw fentanyl in” to the product. He didn’t clarify how that would happen in a dispensary, and there has yet to be a single case of fentanyl-adulterated marijuana from any dispensary in Florida since the program’s inception.

“We have medical in our Constitution, we have medical marijuana, we enforce that, you know, we abide by it, but to take action now to make it even more available, I would not do that,” DeSantis said, adding that legalization in Colorado has only expanded the “black market.”

Early in his first term in office, DeSantis pleased reformers when he came out against the Rick Scott-era opposition to cannabis that could be smoked. Previously, loose flower was not available, with only vaporizer cups for sale at dispensaries.

“I look at someone who has Lou Gehrig’s disease or terminal cancer or multiple sclerosis. … I think the Florida voters who voted for that wanted them to have access to medical marijuana under the supervision of a physician. Whether they have to smoke it or not, who am I to judge that?” DeSantis said. “I want people to have their suffering relieved. I don’t think this law is up to snuff.”

However, the Governor took a harder line against marijuana in recent years.

“If you look at some of the stuff that’s now coming down, there’s a lot of really bad things in it. It’s not necessarily what you would’ve had 30 years ago when someone’s in college and they’re doing something. You have some really, really bad stuff in there, so I think having the ability to identify that, I think, that’s safety, and quite frankly when you get into some of that stuff, it’s not medicinal at that point for sure,” DeSantis said, in response to a reporter’s question in 2021.

In 2022, the Governor took an even harder line position against so-called “recreational” use.

“What I don’t like about it is if you go to some of these places that have done it, the stench when you’re out there, I mean, it smells so putrid,” he told reporters. “I could not believe the pungent odor that you would see in some of these places. I don’t want to see that here. I want people to be able to breathe freely.”