In CT, police can't stop a car for cannabis use. Should that change?

In CT, police can’t stop a car for cannabis use. Should that change?

March 31, 2025

Meriden Chief of Police Rob Rosado says his officers constantly smell marijuana throughout the city.

“ You drive down the road and you can smell that odor,” he told members of the state legislature’s Judiciary Committee in a public hearing on Monday.

Rosado, who is also the president of the Connecticut Police Chiefs Association, said officers frequently see individuals consuming cannabis while driving. “There’s violations there constantly throughout the city of Meriden, but that could be the same for anywhere in the state of Connecticut,” he said.

The police chiefs are asking lawmakers to pass legislation that would allow law enforcement officers to pull people over for consuming cannabis while driving. The bill would also call for a study to establish a maximum blood-THC level for people operating motor vehicles.

Although it’s illegal to drive while under the influence of cannabis, current law says police officers can’t stop a vehicle solely because a driver is using the substance.

The proposed legislation would change that, allowing police officers to pull someone over if they either see the driver using cannabis or smell its “burnt odor.” It would also allow an officer to search a vehicle if the driver was seen using cannabis.

Rep. Greg Howard, R-Stonington, said police currently have the right to search a vehicle if they see someone drinking alcohol and if that person attempts to hide the container. The cannabis bill, H.B. 7258, would apply a similar standard to cannabis use, Howard said, echoing testimony from the police chiefs.

Some lawmakers questioned whether the proposed bill was strong enough.

“I think that this starts to take it in the right direction but I’m not sure that it goes far enough if the actual observation needs to happen,” said Rep. Michael Quinn, D-Meriden.

But Rep. Steven Stafstrom, D-Bridgeport, said he didn’t think the bill was necessary. He said officers already have many reasons they can pull people over.

“I think this notion that a car can’t be stopped when a cop quote-unquote knows someone is smoking cannabis — I don’t buy it,” Stafstrom said. “I think there are so many other reasons the car can be pulled over.”

But Rosado contended that his goal was to stop drivers before something goes wrong on the road. “Why wait for a violation when we could actually pull the individual over when we see this and also smell it?” he asked.

Connecticut’s House Republicans submitted written testimony in support of the bill, calling it “common sense” and “a step in the right direction.”

“It makes no sense that an officer must generally ignore the smell of cannabis, while the smell of alcohol may be used by an officer to establish a legal basis for a stop or search of a vehicle. It strains credulity to discern a reason that these two substances — which both are intoxicating and illegal to consume while operating a car — should be treated differently,” they said.

But several people who testified to the committee said detecting cannabis poses greater challenges than alcohol does, since people’s bodies process THC at different rates and the chemical impacts individuals in different ways.

Rosado also said there are very few drug recognition experts — police officers trained in determining whether drivers are under the influence of drugs — throughout the state of Connecticut. That limits police efforts to identify impaired drivers.

The bill would also require the state Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection to explore setting a limit for how much THC a driver can have in their bloodstream. Five states — Ohio, Illinois, Montana, Washington and Nevada — have established such limits.

People who opposed the bill overwhelmingly said they were against people driving while high. But they underscored that current methods for detecting cannabis usage were inaccurate.

John R. DelBarba, assistant legal counsel in the chief public defender’s office, said in written testimony that current drug tests don’t accurately show whether someone is “impaired” by cannabis. He and others noted that the drug can linger in the bloodstream for 24 to 48 hours after use, and that regular users may have consistently high levels of the compound in their blood.

DelBarba also questioned whether the smell of marijuana was enough to meet the burden of “probable cause” necessary to stop a motor vehicle.

Josiah Schlee, a member of the advocacy organization CT CannaWarriors, said he was once stopped by drug recognition experts on his way home from a concert where he was working as a photographer. He said that while he had no cannabis in his car, and was “stone-cold sober,” the odor of marijuana that pervaded the concert lingered on his clothes.

Schlee said he was given a sobriety test, which he said he failed because of a visual issue. He spent the next year contesting the charges in court, which hampered his ability to find work.

“I had to spend 13 months in court fighting these charges,” he said.

People opposing the bill also said they viewed it as a way of bringing back the “drug wars,” and said they feared the legislation would disproportionately impact people of color.

“[This bill] in my opinion, does not make our roads safer,” said Christina Capitan, a cofounder of CT CannaWarriors. “It just makes it easier to punish cannabis consumers for using a legal substance, especially those who are already overpoliced.”

Instead, she and others proposed that the state invest in safe consumption spaces, rideshare programs and public education about marijuana.

“The infrastructure around drug recognition experts in Connecticut needs to be bolstered, as well as the science and technology needs to catch up,” said Duncan Markovich, owner of the cannabis store Better Ways. “Please always keep the ideal of education over enforcement while crafting these common sense cannabis laws.”

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