Indopedia All Things Marijuana
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As medical and recreational cannabis become increasingly legal across the United States, a decades-old piece of federal legislation banning drug users from owning and operating firearms has been creating complications for gun-owning marijuana consumers with greater frequency, while serving as one more tool for the criminal justice system to continue waging its War on Drugs.
Even before Hawaiian police sent letters to medical cannabis patients requesting their legally obtained guns (a policy which has since been rescinded), and lawmakers in Delaware started debating whether to block medical marijuana users from buying firearms, one Texas man found out the hard way that there can be very real consequences for violating the federal statute.
According to the Austin American-Statesman, Steven Boehle, a cannabis user suspected but not convicted of planning an attack against local police earlier this year, has served eight months of jail time and will be under probation for the next five years — all because he is a toking gun owner.
The incident unfolded when earlier this year, police in Austin, Texas got a tip from a confidential informant who told…
