A New Jersey appeals court ruled this month that two Jersey City police officers should be reinstated and allowed to carry firearms after they were previously fired for off-duty cannabis use. NJ.com reports.

State law protects employees from discipline for off-duty cannabis use as long as there is no evidence of on-duty impairment. But the officers, Omar Polanco and Norhan Mansour, were both removed from active duty in March 2023 after testing positive for cannabis during random drug tests, and later admitted to using state-regulated cannabis products.

The officers were not charged with being drunk on the job, but the state argued that the federal Gun Control Act prevents cannabis users from legally possessing firearms.

The court concluded that firearms issued for police duty would fall under a federal exception to the law. According to the ruling, the officers were awarded back pay, plus the benefits and seniority they lost due to their reassignment.

Michael P. Rubas, the officers’ attorney, said in the report that, “Jersey City is flagrantly violating the law, flagrantly violating the Attorney General’s directives and taking jobs unfavorable to these officers.”

Most Americans support the federal government’s reclassification of medical cannabis, according to a ANALYSIS of more than 40,000 comments on public records about federal proposals by researchers at Johns Hopkins University and the University of California San Diego.

In response to a 2024 proposal by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to reschedule cannabis, 42,913 comments were submitted on the docket, which is part of the federal e-regulatory process and how the public can engage with the proposed regulations. It marked the largest amount of public input to date on federal cannabis policy.

The researchers took every comment posted on the e-rulemaking portal during the 63-day comment window and analyzed them through a large open-source language model, which was then validated against human review. The team found that 63.5% of commenters also supported further reforms, 28.9% supported the reclassification of Schedule III as proposed, while only 6.7% opposed any changes.

An overwhelming majority – 92.4% – wanted cannabis removed from Schedule I under the Controlled Substances Act.

Nearly 57% of supporters cited the therapeutic benefits most often, while 27.8% noted the economic impacts on the cannabis industry and state revenues, with 24.4% also expressing the need for clearer federal regulation to ensure public safety.

The Trump administration on April 24 moved Food and Drug-approved cannabis products sold under qualifying state medical cannabis licenses from Schedule I to Schedule III under federal law, while also setting a new administrative hearing on June 29, 2026 to restart and expedite the broader DEA reprogramming process.