WTF: Your Pot or Your Guns?!?! Illinois, BATF Say It’s One or the Other!

From the Land of Lincoln (and
Obama!) comes the latest variation of stupid policy as Illinois
grapples with implementing medical marijuana laws. As the Chicago
Tribune reports:

Patients who want to qualify for medical marijuana in Illinois
would have to be fingerprinted for a background check and pay $150
a year — and give up their right to own a gun, state officials
proposed Tuesday.

The plan outlines how adults who have any of 41 specified
medical conditions, such as cancer, AIDS or complex regional pain
syndrome, may apply to get a patient registry identification card
to purchase medical pot.

The proposed rules are the first in a series of parameters
expected to be outlined over the course of the year to govern how
medical marijuana can be legally grown, sold and purchased. The
Illinois Department of Public Health will take public comment on
this set of rules until Feb. 7 and then submit them to a
legislative panel for approval by the end of April….

Illinois is the 20th state to allow medical marijuana. The
proposed rules may be seen at mcpp.illinois.gov.

More here.

Hat tip: Reader Charles Dougherty.

In 2011, Reason’s Brian Doherty
reported on how the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms &
Explosives was applying a federal full-nelson on states that allow
medical marijuana:

Merely having a state medical marijuana card, BATFE insists,
means that you fall afoul of Sect.
922(g) of the federal criminal code (from
the 1968
federal Gun Control Act), which says that anyone “who is an
unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance” is
basically barred from possessing or receiving guns or ammo (with
the bogus assertion that such possession implicates interstate
commerce, which courts will pretty much always claim it does).

Read the whole thing.

Related: “Ending
the War on Pot is Obama’s Last Chance for a Legacy.”