STANDARD DISCLAIMERS APPLY: You are not my lawyer, I am not your client.
Recreational marijuana goes on sale in Illinois on January 1. A dispensary in Collinsville, Illinois is located just across the river from a metro area of ~a million people, many of whom pot smokers who are going to want to get in on that action.
Of course, getting in on that action would require illegally transporting legal Illinois pot across the Mississippi River and into Missouri, where it’s very much illegal without prior physicians’ authorization.
Some legal questions about enforcement in Missouri:
Could a law-enforcement agency in Missouri, say the Missouri Highway Patrol, send someone over to Collinsville to look for Missouri plates in the dispensary parking lot, and radio ahead to their colleagues in MO to look out for, say, a red Toyota Yaris missing a front hub cap?
Failing #1, could Missouri set up a cooperative arrangement with, say, Illinois Highway Patrol or the Collinsville PD or whatever, to look for Missouri plates in the dispensary parking lot, and to radio ahead to be on the lookout for, say, a red Toyota Yaris missing a front hub cap?.
Is having been seen at a dispensary in Illinois, then coming back into Missouri, itself sufficient probable cause to search a vehicle? Or would the driver, who knows to demand a warrant and never to consent to a search, be in the clear?
Wednesday is going to be an interesting day, I think.
(My thinking is that, considering that thousands of people cross the river from Illinois into St. Louis every day, enforcement is going to be next to impossible.)
They could, I guess, but why would Collinsville or the highway patrol do that? Those are out-of-town and out-of-state dollars flowing in for something that’s legal in Illinois. If I read the statute right, non-residents can have up to 15 grams at a time.
“Have,” yes, but “transport into Missouri,” no. Now, neither you nor I believe that the budtenders at the dispensary are going to ask everyone with an out-of-state ID if they plan on taking it home, as they have bigger fish to fry. But the zeal of law enforcement to bust people with pot knows no bounds (in some places anyway).
I know that this is a common tactic for fireworks. Although, I think what they tend to do is follow you across the state line; rather than just notify someone else sitting on the state line. I’ve also heard of it being done with alcohol: staking out a liquor store in a lower-tax jurisdiction and then busting people for bootlegging when the cross state lines.
Here’s an article about Idaho police being concerned about a new pot shop opening closer to the Idaho border than before. One of the points was:
So undercover operations as suggested by the OP would not be a legal cause to stop vehicles.
BTW, even though several of Oregon’s neighbors (all but Idaho) have legal mj, it’s not legal to buy it in Oregon and transport it to those other states. Yes, that violates federal law, but it also volates Oregon law. Marijuana purchased in Oregon is meant to be consumed in Oregon. And I believe that’s the case with all states that have legalized it.
Probably. I believe that police officers outside their jurisdiction generally don’t have police powers, absent emergencies, but they can still go to other places to look for evidence of crimes.
This one is hairier, and maybe someone can find a test case on this, but I would bet that a police officer who observes someone leaving a dispensary, getting into their car, and then the car crosses the state line within the time period it takes to drive directly from the dispensary to the state line would constitute probable cause. Sure seems pretty “probable” to this layman that a crime is being committed.
Car parked in dispensary parking lot and some unknown time later it crosses the state line is maybe murkier. The passengers could have consumed the marijuana in the legal jurisdiction and the driver could be sober.
I’ve been to Seattle and Denver over the past few years. Each time the scurity protocol on departure from Sea-Tac or Denver Intl, TSA had dogs sniffing passengers as they went by. It only occurred to me later that they may have been looking for marijuana.
Which leads to a question: One thing I purchased in Denver was ointment for my arthritic knees. If I had slathered some on before going to the airport and a dog detected it, might I have been in some trouble for transporting?
Could be that the dogs were looking for other drugs, or bomb-making residue, or even agricultural products. Anecdotal reports, published in High Times, for example, say that the TSA will generally look the other way at “small amounts” of doob in your carry-on. Of course, YMMV, the plural of anecdote is not data, still illegal at the federal level, blah blah blah.
Most likely bomb sniffing dogs. The TSA’s policy is to report any drug finds to local law enforcement, but they don’t specifically search for it. There’s so much weed out there nowadays that weed-sniffing dogs/handlers would be overwhelmed with false positives.
That’s a roundabout way to say that you can probably carry pot if you take care to make it not look like a bomb, but I personally would not risk it, being a law-abiding citizen of extraordinary moral character.
How difficult is getting physicians’ authorization compared to the risk of being charged with transportation of schedule 1 drug across state lines, which could result in some rather unpleasant Federal sanctions.
Well, you see, I have this moral problem with paying the State of Missouri an amount of money for their permission to use a medicinal plant that H Sapiens has been using for thousands of years.
Otherwise not very difficult, save for an investment of about $100, give or take.
[QUOTE=HeyHomie;220524051) Could a law-enforcement agency in Missouri, say the Missouri Highway Patrol, send someone over to Collinsville to look for Missouri plates in the dispensary parking lot, and radio ahead to their colleagues in MO to look out for, say, a red Toyota Yaris missing a front hub cap?[/QUOTE]
Minnesota has done such a thing outside Indian Reservations, where they sell cartons of cigarettes intended for consumption only on the reservation, lacking the required tax stamp. The identified cars would be pulled over when they passed outside the boundary of the reservation (only a couple of roads available in some locations).
But this was not done by mere police, but by someone far more important to the state – the Department of Revenue!
Just from a logistics standpoint, this doesn’t seem very reasonable. Collinsville is 15 miles away from the river, and there’s 4 or 5 different bridges they could cross. It’s not like there’s a checkpoint they have to go through.
My first search says NO, as do all the other other links links I found is about a minute.
I totally get that. If you consider this to be an acceptable level of risk (and frankly, as long as you don’t drive like an asshole , you will probably never have an issue), go for it.
I have been pulled over in Utah for having Colorado liscense plates (the real reason was passing a school bus on the freeway) right after we legalized weed. There have been thousands of reports of people being pulled over shortly after leaving Colorado by the surrounding state’s police force. I would guess your state cops are going to flood those roads in the sext year looking for people who aren’t using turn signals to change lanes.
Obviously it is an unanswered question by the courts, but from my understanding of the case law, it would depend on the distance from the dispensary to the border town and the time that the MO vehicle was observed in the dispensary parking lot and the time it is observed back in MO.
I mean, the standard is probable cause. If we are talking about 2 miles down the road, the vehicle is seen at the dispensary, which only sells “to go” packages, and is seen 11 minutes later back in MO, do you think it is “probable” that they bought weed there and brought it back? Me too.