Rules of Engagement

We have always known that cannabis law violations are thought crimes. So it proves out in the need for cunning words to make arrests. This post is more about the passengers then the drivers in our community.

How to give your friend an instant DUI arrest

Another practice carried over from the zero-tolerance days is guilt by association. When shared use is misuse, the stash of a passenger reflects on the driver. It doesn’t matter if you’re the most infamous Bogart, that cop doesn’t know you.

Following their logic through, they work with an assumption that a passenger with pot must have shared it with or is holding it for the driver. Therefore any pot found in the car cabin,
(areas excluding a locked glove box or trunk)
is assumed accessible to the diver. Therefore the driver must have used some.

The 2 Step DUI Setup

So as a moment’s thought will reveal, there is a mindset, a motivation, and a potential for abuse. Be suspicious when the first or second thing said to you goes like this.
“I smell ‘merijuana” then asks to be shown some contraband saying, “It’s OK now, it’s not illegal, you can show us your weed!”
Do it and your driver gets an automatic field sobriety test and the attendant risk of detention or false arrest.
Asking to show your weed may just seem like an innocent try to get you to volunteer extra authority to the officers. Actually, it is profiling and false legal advise combined. Don’t dignify it with an answer.  He’s only asking to turn something legal back into something illegal.

Passengers Don’t Get Pulled Over

Drivers do and any traffic stop is an affair between the driver and the police, not with you unless you make it that way. This post is not about how to fend off attempts to drag you into the driver’s business, just know your rights.
Passengers have the right to eschew and deny verbal contact with an officer when in a stopped car. I don’t know how reckless you have to be to to think a cop would innocently make such a request as show us your weed.
If pressed for any answers I like to simply say, “That’s a horse-shit question mister.” Let them know they are being offensive with their irrelevant questioning. Saying mister instead of officer is to indicate that they are trying to act against you from outside the realm of their authority. The cop has violated his oath.
A ploy to match their Cheech & Chong bigot filter could instead snare someone with pot pride who doesn’t know about the peril. Know that any admission of possession in a car puts a driver in peril. The peril of the “drugs” exception to our Constitutional rights.

That’s it. How a passenger causes an instant DUI for an innocent driver.
An example of vicious police corruption around marijuana continues in the legalized States.

Here’s some extra wisdom for passengers or anybody to read