The Justice Department has carved marijuana out of the federal rules for restoring firearms rights, exempting not only casual users but people addicted to the drug, a break it extends to no other controlled substance.
The final rule, published on August 20 and effective on September 21, revives the long-dormant process under 18 U.S.C. § 925(c) that allows people barred from owning guns to apply to the Attorney General to regain their rights.
Inside it, the Department rewrote the definition of “controlled substance” to exclude marijuana, and redefined “unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance” to exclude anyone whose only use or addiction is marijuana. As a result, marijuana use or addiction is no longer a presumptive disqualifier, and applicants and their three character references no longer have to affirm, under penalty of perjury, that the applicant is not a marijuana user or addict. Users of every other drug, from cocaine to heroin, remain presumptively barred and must still swear off their use. It is a reversal from the Department’s own proposal a year earlier, when the comments it received focused almost entirely on marijuana.
The Department justified the change with the Supreme Court’s 2026 decision in United States v. Hemani, which it described as “consciously ‘narrow'” and which turned on the lack of evidence that one man’s marijuana use showed “his addiction, his inability to manage his own affairs, or his dangerousness to others.” The Court said the ruling “should not be read to cast doubt” on other applications of the ban.
Then the Department acknowledged it went further than the Court did. In the rule’s own words: “The Department acknowledges that making these changes with respect to marijuana addicts (not just marijuana users) goes beyond the facts at issue in Hemani, but the Department has determined that doing so is necessary to improve the administrability of the restoration process.” The reason it gave was not public safety but paperwork, saying it “would struggle to differentiate” a marijuana user from a marijuana addict.
That rationale sits awkwardly against the legal foundation the rule itself invokes. Dangerousness is the whole point of the framework: the Supreme Court has said firearms may be taken from those who are dangerous; Hemani hinged on the absence of evidence that the user in that case posed a danger, and the restoration statute asks whether an applicant “will not be likely to act in a manner dangerous to public safety.” By exempting marijuana addiction for reasons of administrative convenience, rather than any finding about dangerousness, the rule sidesteps the exact question Congress built the process around.
That distinction is not trivial. Cannabis is addictive, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse estimates that 22 to 30 percent of people who use it develop cannabis use disorder, with frequent use the strongest predictor, at a time when THC potency has roughly quadrupled since the 1990s. Frequent use of high-potency cannabis has also been linked to psychosis, and a growing body of research has examined a link to violence: a 2020 meta-analysis in the American Journal of Psychiatry reported a moderate association between cannabis use and physical violence, with larger effects among more frequent users. The question has drawn national attention as heavy marijuana use has surfaced in the histories of several high-profile mass shooters, though researchers caution that such associations do not establish causation.
One caveat worth keeping straight: the rule does not automatically restore anyone’s rights. The Attorney General still makes an individualized public-safety determination, and the process applies to people with a separate federal disability, such as a felony conviction. Marijuana remains federally illegal, and active users are still prohibited under 922(g)(3).
The upshot is narrow but pointed. A convicted felon who is also addicted to marijuana can now seek his firearms back without the addiction counting against him, a pass the government grants no other drug, and one the government granted without ever deciding the drug is safe.