Catching a whiff of a weed shouldn’t be enough for probable cause, and South Carolina lawmakers want to make sure it no longer is. That’s the thinking behind a bill offered up by a Democratic lawmaker in South Carolina.

State House Representative Deon Tedder “is pushing for a bill where the scent of marijuana alone would not provide law enforcement with reasonable suspicion or probable cause to support a stop, search, seizure or arrest,” according to local television station WSPA.

“The smell alone is not enough to be considered an illegal act because the accused could’ve been around someone who was illegally using marijuana or legally using hemp and both substances smell the same,” Tedder said, as quoted by the station.

“It’s a fishing expedition is what I call it,” he continued. “It just allows for them to search for things, so I think that this bill will take care of that and stop certain bad actors on police forces from doing a fishing expedition because then they could just go look for anything.”

The station reported that the bill “would stop a person or motor vehicle from being stopped or searched based solely on the scent of marijuana, cannabis or hemp, whether burnt or not,” and that it would not “stop an officer from searching a vehicle if someone appears under the influence.”

Tedder, a Democrat from Charleston, was motivated to propose the legislation because he believes “most people stopped and searched in South Carolina are African American males who were stopped because an officer allegedly smelled marijuana,” according to the station.

The bill might have an uphill climb in the state’s general assembly, where Republicans hold large majorities in each chamber.

South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster, a Republican, has said that he is opposed to legalizing recreational pot.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” McMaster said last year. “It’s not helpful.” 

South Carolina is currently one of only 14 states that has not legalized medical cannabis, although McMaster has said he is potentially amenable to the policy.

“That’s a different story, and there may be some answers there,” he said last summer. “I know there’s a lot of suffering that is helped with medical marijuana.”

McMaster will be up for re-election this year. One potential challenger, Democratic congressman Joe Cunningham, has made it clear that he intends to run on legalization. 

“This is going to be a game changer in South Carolina,” Cunningham said last year of legalizing recreational and medical cannabis in the state. “There are so many reasons why we need to do this, and the time is now.”

“People are behind it, and politicians need to get behind it, too,” Cunningham added.

He might have a point.

A poll released last year by the Marijuana Policy Project found that 72 percent of South Carolina voters support “allowing patients in [the state] who suffer from serious medical conditions to use medical marijuana if their doctors recommend it,” while only 15 percent were opposed.

The absence of a medical cannabis law is not due to a lack of trying.

Legislators in South Carolina have taken a stab at medical cannabis bills in recent years. In late 2020, a Republican state senator there introduced the South Carolina Compassionate Care Act, which would have legalized medical marijuana for the following qualifying conditions: cancer; multiple sclerosis; neurological disease; sickle cell anemia; glaucoma; PTSD; autism; Crohn’s disease; ulcerative colitis; cachexia; conditions that cause people to stay home chronically, be chronically nauseous or have persistent muscle spasms; a chronic medical condition requiring opiates and terminal diseases where the patient has a year or less to live.

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Activists in Wyoming are circulating petitions for two ballot measures to reform cannabis policy in the state, including one to legalize medical marijuana and a second to reduce penalties for cannabis-related crimes.

Wyoming is one of about a dozen states that have not yet passed laws to legalize cannabis in some form, despite data from the University of Wyoming that shows a majority of residents support cannabis reform and 85 percent support legalizing medical cannabis. Last year, a bill to study medical marijuana and another measure to legalize and regulate cannabis died in the Wyoming House of Representatives without a hearing, despite both measures gaining the approval of the House Judiciary Committee. 

Activists Advance Two Ballot Proposals

Due to the legislature’s inability to pass cannabis legislation, the Libertarian Party of Wyoming is leading the campaign for two ballot initiatives to reform marijuana policy in the state. The first proposal would legalize the medicinal use of cannabis, while the second would reduce the penalties for cannabis offenses. 

To qualify an initiative to legalize cannabis for the ballot in Wyoming, organizers will have to collect enough signatures to total 15 percent of the vote cast in the 2020 general election, when voter turnout was particularly high because of the hotly contested presidential race. The initiative campaign is also required to collect signatures from 15 percent of voters in at least two-thirds of Wyoming’s 23 counties.

Approximately 278,000 people voted in the general election in 2020, meaning that activists will have to collect more than 41,000 qualified voter signatures for each initiative to qualify for the 2024 election. Initiative campaigns are given an 18-month window to collect the required signatures, setting a deadline for the cannabis legalization measure organizers until January 23 to meet the requirement.

After collecting signatures, organizers are required to submit petitions to the office of the Secretary of State for verification. If enough signatures from registered voters have been collected, the successful measures will be added to the ballot and passed into law if approved by a majority of voters. 

Organizers say that this year’s election is too soon to collect enough signatures for the 2022 ballot. So instead, they hope to qualify the measures for the 2024 general election. Apollo Pazell, chief strategist for the national Libertarian Party, told reporters that the campaign has so far collected about 30 percent of necessary signatures.

“Everything seems to be on pace,” Pazell said.

Not an Easy Proposition

Wyoming’s requirements to qualify a voter initiative for the ballot are among the most strict in the nation, according to election information website Ballotpedia. As a result, it is a little-used method of passing legislation in the state.

“The ballot initiatives are not as common here as they are in other states,” Ryan Frost, public information officer for the state Legislative Service Office, told Caspar Star-Tribune.

Campaign organizer Mario Presutti said that most people who support the effort to reform cannabis policy in Wyoming sign both petitions. But when appropriate, volunteers prioritize the medical cannabis initiative, which now has about five percent more signatures than the initiative to reduce cannabis penalties.

“We think that the patients need to be first,” Pazell said. “This has proven to be an invaluable medication for so many patients… that is being withheld for political reasons.”

Over the past three months, approximately 1,100 residents of Sheridan County, Wyoming have signed cannabis legalization petitions. Chief Travis Koltiska of the Sheridan Police Department warned voters to be sure they know what they are supporting at the ballot box.

“This has been a discussion across the state for many years, and there is language trying to sway people on both sides of the issue,” Koltiska told the Sheridan Press. ”When people look at this petition, they need to educate themselves on the facts. Because some good things might come of it, but some bad things might as well. It’s a complicated issue from our perspective.”

Koltiska acknowledged “there are substances that have proven to have medical benefits” in cannabis, although he is also concerned that cannabis legalization could lead to drug abuse and crime.

“The potential legalization of marijuana for medical use is concerning because there is potential for abuse of any substance that impairs cognitive ability,” Koltiska said. “It’s the same thing with alcohol. If alcohol wasn’t already legal, I’m not sure I would support legalization efforts based on what we see day-to-day in our department. Over 80 percent of our arrests are alcohol and drug-related, and it is difficult to be supportive of something that has the potential for serious abuse.”

Keith Goodenough, a former Wyoming Democratic state senator, tried to pass cannabis reform legislation in the early 2000s but was thwarted by more conservative politicians. He predicted that activists will face even more opposition from the right this time around.

“The fundamentalist candidates have consistently taken a position against cannabis,” he said. “(There are) many more fundamentalist legislators in there now than there used to be.”

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City leaders in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday extended a lifeline to the district’s beleaguered medical cannabis dispensaries. 

The D.C. Council gave unanimous approval to an emergency bill that will allow medical cannabis patients “whose cards expired since Mar. 2020 to continue using them to purchase medical marijuana through the end of Jan. 2022,” the website DCist reported, while additionally creating “a new two-year medical marijuana card (instead of the current one-year card), and increases the amount of marijuana a patient can buy at a time to eight ounces, up from four.”

The emergency measure, the website noted, is designed to help dispensaries that “have seen a steep drop-off in business this year because many patients who saw their medical marijuana cards expire during the pandemic have not renewed them yet.”

The bill was brought by Phil Mendelson, chairman of the D.C. Council, who said he was motivated to act when a public health emergency declared by the district expired in the summer. 

That resulted in “roughly 6,216 patient registrations for the District’s medical cannabis program [expiring] in a very short time period, reducing the number of registered patients in the program from nearly 12,000 to approximately 5,500,” Mendelson said in a memorandum to the council late last month. 

DCist reported that there was “minimal” debate over Mendelson’s bill on Tuesday, although the leadup to the vote on the measure was at time contentious.

One of the key sticking points, according to the website, centered around provisions in Mendelson’s original bill that “would have ramped up civil enforcement against marijuana ‘gifting’ stores and delivery services, which have grown in number in recent years and have been accused of stealing business from the regulated medical marijuana program.”

Such stores have skirted bans on selling marijuana commercially by selling products like t-shirts for unusually high prices and then offering “gifts” of marijuana to customers in the transaction.

Mendelson ultimately dropped that provision after “an outcry from operators of the stores and their advocates,” according to the DCist.

“Since the usual illegal businesses don’t follow the same rules as other licensees, they are driving cultivators, producers, and retailers out of business. After all, how can you compete with someone who is not playing by the same rules you are bound to, such as ensuring quality, paying sales taxes, and following other regulatory requirements?” Mendelson said, as quoted by the website.

Mendelson’s concerns about illicit cannabis sales in Washington, D.C. underscores a dilemma surrounding pot sales in the district that has persisted years after voters there approved a measure legalizing recreational marijuana.

District voters legalized weed in 2014, but sales of pot have continued to be illegal due to congressional oversight of laws in D.C. 

Every appropriations bill passed by Congress since that legalization vote seven years ago has included a budget rider, written originally by Republican Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland, that bars the district from commercializing weed.

But there have been recent signs that the so-called “Harris rider” may not be long for this world.

The appropriations bill introduced last month by Democrats in the U.S. Senate, notably, did not include the rider, which was celebrated by marijuana advocates and Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser. 

“The Senate appropriations bill is a critical step in recognizing that in a democracy, D.C. residents should be governed by D.C. values,” Bowser’s office said in a statement the time. “As we continue on the path to D.C. statehood, I want to thank Senate Appropriations Committee Chair, Senator Patrick Leahy, our good friend and Subcommittee Chair, Senator Chris Van Hollen, and, of course, our champion on the Hill, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, for recognizing and advancing the will of D.C. voters. We urge Congress to pass a final spending bill that similarly removes all anti-Home Rule riders, allowing D.C. to spend our local funds as we see fit.”

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