The coming launch of Pennsylvania’s medical marijuana program, which state officials have said should begin operating sometime this year — should be a subject of pride and celebration.

Instead, over the past week there’s been more consternation than celebration, as it’s become clear that the people who might actually benefit from the treatments are going to be asked to make choices between their health and their constitutional rights.

Namely their Second Amendment right to bear arms. Which is sacred enough to ensure that users — and even addicts — of alcohol and opioids can buy firearms at-will, but doesn’t protect patients being prescribed a legal drug for a very narrow set of serious ailments, simply because that drug is a form of marijuana.

It doesn’t matter that medical marijuana in Pennsylvania won’t get you high — the state’s system forbids smoking marijuana or selling “buds” or other plant matter, and instead focuses on pills and tinctures that use non-psychoactive compounds called cannabidiol (CBD).

All that matters is that the word “marijuana” has been used, and that the federal government still stubbornly clings to outdated and politically-motivated policies on the drug — namely that it is somehow just as dangerous and addictive as substances like cocaine, heroin and LSD.

To truly understand how ridiculous this situation is, one must dig into two federal appeals court rulings, from 2016 and 2014.

In one case a Nevada woman who was denied the ability to purchase a handgun in 2011 sued, claiming the gun store owner violated her Second Amendment rights by refusing to sell her a gun.

The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit disagreed, ruling last year that the woman was rightly barred from buying the weapon because marijuana has been linked to “irrational or unpredictable behavior.”

Another federal appeals court in Virginia, the 4th Circuit, one-upped the 9th Circuit in an astounding 2014 ruling, finding that it doesn’t matter whether a drug actually causes violence or not.

“Government need not prove a causal link between drug use and violence,” to block firearms sales to drug users, the court wrote.

Instead, all that’s required is a link — any link at all — between drugs and violence, the court argued. Even if causality runs the wrong way, and violence is what’s prompting drug use, that’s still good enough to form the legal basis for violating peoples’ constitutional rights.

That means that patients signed up for Pennsylvania’s medical marijuana program — the state had already registered more than 10,000 as of last month — won’t be able to buy firearms, and could run afoul of the law if they try.

Attorney Andrew Sacks, the co-chairman of the Pennsylvania Bar Association’s committee on medical marijuana, rightly called the federal government’s policy “hypocritical,” in an interview earlier this week.

“You can be an opioid addict, or buy a bottle of rum, drink it and go to a store and buy (a gun),” Sacks said. “But a person who is registered as a medical marijuana patient in Pennsylvania, and has a very small dosage of THC, can’t own a gun to protect themselves or hunt.”

It’s difficult to overstate how absurd and backward this state of affairs has become.

Patients using a legal and legally prescribed drug should not have to choose between their health and their constitutional rights.

They shouldn’t have to rely upon Gov. Tom Wolf to promise them that their guns won’t be taken away — as he did Thursday — and they shouldn’t be barred from buying more guns, either.

It’s time for Congress to step in and do what it should have done long ago: abolish any penalties for medical marijuana patients in states that have legalized the drug.