The Drug Exception to
the Second Amendment

By Jacob Sullum. Mar 13, 2023

Jeronimo Yanez remembered smelling "the odor of burning marijuana" as he approached the white Oldsmobile sedan he had stopped near the intersection of Larpenteur Avenue and Fry Street in Falcon Heights, Minnesota. It was a little after 9 p.m. on a Wednesday in July 2016, and Yanez, who worked for the St. Anthony Police Department, had been assigned to patrol the streets of Lauderdale, a city just west of Falcon Heights.

The whiff of weed from the Oldsmobile, Yanez later said, figured in the threat he perceived from the car's driver, a 32-year-old school cafeteria worker named Philando Castile. Yanez fatally shot Castile, who had a permit to carry a concealed weapon, a few seconds after learning that he had a gun in the car.

The marijuana that alarmed Yanez also figured in public comments about the shooting by Dana Loesch, a conservative radio host who at the time was a spokeswoman for the National Rifle Association (NRA). Castile's death seemed to be a clear case of an innocent man who was killed for exercising his Second Amendment rights. But the NRA, which initially called the incident "troubling," never took a position on whether the shooting was justified. Several journalists thought they had an explanation for the NRA's reticence when Loesch brought up Castile's marijuana use, which made it illegal for him to own a gun, let alone carry one in public.

Loesch rejected that interpretation of her comments. .....