Cannabis Smell Isn’t Probable Cause, Maryland Court Rules If you’re lighting up in Maryland, you can forget the Febreze. The state’s Court of Appeals has ruled that merely smelling cannabis is no longer grounds for police to search and arrest a person. The precedent-setting decision is the result of a 2014 state law that decriminalized possession of up to 10 grams of cannabis. While anything more still counts as a crime, having less than 10 grams is now designated as a civil offense. And that, the Maryland court said in a ruling last week, means police went too far when they searched a man’s pockets after detecting the smell of burnt cannabis coming from his parked car. “In the post-decriminalization era,” the court wrote, “the mere odor of marijuana coupled with possession of what is clearly less than ten grams of marijuana, absent other circumstances, does not grant officers probable cause to effectuate an arrest and conduct a search.” The decision is the latest in a string of rulings across the country that are removing the scent of cannabis—long used by police to justify warrantless searches of people and property—as a source of probable cause. The case arose after police in Wheaton, MD, noticed what they described as a “suspicious vehicle” parked behind a laundromat in 2016. As they approached the car, which had its windows down, they detected the smell of burnt cannabis and saw a joint in the vehicle’s center console. #probablecause #approach #maryland #schedule1 #holysmokestv #holysmokes #holysmokescrafts #oneman #solo #cannabis #reform #legalization #safeaccess #news #ismokecannabis #medicalcannabis #thc #cbd #breal #massroots #rawlife #rawlife247 #losangeles #california #ca #la #smell #search #arrest #arrested (at San Pedro, California) https://www.instagram.com/p/B1axFY9hsQ8/?igshid=tvdrparpbule