But?
almost forgot bucho, nobody asked for an opinion on smoking weed. you’re no better than anybody and dont think you can tell people how to live when nobody was asking you.
So if you’re a passenger in a car where others are smoking weed, and the police pull the car over and ask who the ganja belongs to, is it better to plead your case straight to the policeman (‘I had nothing to do with this’) or to simply shut up?
Funny, no one mentioned this site before which has state by state laws:
National Org for the Reform of Marijuana Laws…
::San Francisco resident chiming in::
Let’s not stereotype, hmmm? I have personally been released after getting caught smoking a joint in Uvalde, TX (can’t get much more rural than that) and I have also been arrested in San Francisco for same.
A more correct statement might be “Some cops might want to bust everyone for whatever reason, while others wouldn’t give a damn, depending on the circumstances, the evening they’re having, their personalities, etc.”
I can’t tell you how many times I have seen the Cops come down on pot smoking in San Francisco. Tourists are under the impression that they can stroll along Fisherman’s Wharf burning a spleef, which simply ain’t the case. We may have a more relaxed attitude towards hanging out in your back yard with a joint, and our D.A. is certainly not the most aggressive pursuer or one-time drug offenders, but no one should get the impression that they are guaranteed to get away with things here than they wouldn’t in other cities in the US.
Regardless of how the law is worded, the cops are more or less free to detain and arrest anyone they feel like and worry about justifying it later since the justification is so easy to make up.
Also, if they find pot AND empty bags, scales, or other similar items you can probably count on an “intent to distribute” or similar charge.
All that said, the OP is best answered by telling you that it depends almost entirely upon the cops attitude that busts you. Police have an extraordinary amount of leeway when it comes to this situation, some use it to do good, others for evil.
…but as Bongmaster just said!
Many years ago, I was riding shotgun in a friend’s car, and he had a lid in the glove box. We were pulled over…because there had been a robbery nearby, and our car fit the description of the getaway vehicle. We were surrounded by 7 or 8 police cars, and the officers had their weapons drawn as they told us to “keep your hands in plain sight!”
Of course, they found the weed. My friend was arrested for possesion, but I was free to go…I had the pleasant task of driving his car back to his parents’ house.
Later, we found out that we weren’t even the same race as the robbery suspects, and my friend was not prosecuted (they should have let us go when it was clear that we did not fit the description).