Supporters of legalized medical marijuana will have their opportunity in November to let the voters decide on whether medical marijuana will be available to patients. The controversial ballot initiative was approved by the Florida Supreme Court. Four legislative bills have been introduced which deal with defining, authorizing, and regulating medicinal cannabis and its infrastructure. How will all of this affect law enforcement? Not much…for now.
Most recently, though, in Colorado and Washington State, decriminalization of recreational marijuana has changed the way police narcotics detector dogs go about their business. The obvious issue is whether a narcotics dog’s alert still constitutes probable cause to perform a warrantless search of a vehicle or to obtain a search warrant. Since the dog cannot tell his handler if he is alerting to a small amount of legal marijuana or some other illicit drug, in these states, the legality of sniffs and searches with dogs cross-trained in marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroin have come into question.
The answer for the Washington State Patrol is to replace existing narcotics Continue reading
