Should the smell of Marijuana be used as cause for a vehicle search?
Marylanders Divided on Car Searches Based on Marijuana Smell.
A recent poll by Fox45, the Baltimore Sun, and the University of Baltimore shows Marylanders are grappling with an issue that lawmakers debated in the last session. While a majority of residents support legalizing recreational marijuana, they're not sure that police should be able to search a car because they smell marijuana. 42% say police should be able to search your car if they smell marijuana while 47% say they should not. Legal expert Yuripzy Morgan believes this discrepancy had to do with marijuana.
"There is a complicated nature with marijuana," Morgan said. "When we put it next to alcohol, which is kind of similar in the sense that alcohol is very legal but you can still be stopped if there is a suspicion that you are driving while intoxicated."
She said that it can bet treated similarly to alcohol where "a person can have a drink, can have dinner, and then get in a car, and drive home, but if there is something more than just the smell of alcohol. For example if a person is weaving in and out of traffic, if they've fallen asleep at a stop light. Those sorts of things would give a police officer reasonable suspicion."
She thinks that the concern with making stops simply off the smell of weed is that it is very pungent and "the fear is that people are going to get stopped for something that is now legal in the state of Maryland."
