RI Safe Injection Site Has Ribbon-Cutting Ceremony Tuesday, IL Supreme Court Rules Smell of Weed is Grounds for Vehicle Search, More... (12/9/24)

Paraguay's top antidrug agency is going to stop working with the DEA, the Trump transition team wants to meet with tech and social media companies about illicit online drug sales, and more. 

The Project Weber/RENEW safe injection site in Providence, RI, will soon be open for business. (Creative Commons)

Illinois Supreme Court Holds Odor of Marijuana Sufficient for Vehicle Search. The state Supreme Court ruled last Thursday that the odor of raw marijuana is enough to justify a warrantless search of a vehicle. The ruling came in the case of Vincent Molina, who was a passenger in a car stopped by an officer for speeding. Based solely on the odor of marijuana, the officer searched the car and found several joints. 

Although marijuana possession is legal in the state, the state motor vehicle code requires that "[n]o passenger may possess cannabis within any passenger area of any motor vehicle upon a highway…except in a secured, sealed or resealable, odor-proof, child-resistant cannabis container that is inaccessible." Molina was charged with violating the motor vehicle code. 

At trial, Molina asked the district court to suppress the marijuana as evidence, and the trial court agreed, finding that the smell of raw marijuana by itself was insufficient to establish probable cause for a search. The trial court noted that people could have contact with marijuana for work or medical reasons. 

However, the state Supreme Court said that the trial court's reasoning was flawed because police are not required to rule out possible innocent explanations to establish probable cause for a search. Probable cause "requires only that the facts available to the officer — including the plausibility of an innocent explanation — would warrant a reasonable man to believe there is a reasonable probability’ that a search of the automobile will uncover contraband or evidence of criminal activity," the high court held.

"[U]nlike the odor of burnt cannabis, the odor of raw cannabis coming from a vehicle reliably points to when, where, and how the cannabis is possessed — namely, currently, in the vehicle, and not in an odor-proof container," the court continued. 

But a dissenting opinion held that the court's majority gave too much evidentiary weight to the restrictions on transporting raw marijuana. "Because cannabis, both raw and burnt, is legal notwithstanding multiple restrictions, there is a low degree of suspicion that attaches to its odor," the dissent read. The dissent also found the majority’s ruling "to continue to stigmatize the use of cannabis despite the legislative efforts to legalize the use of cannabis."

Molina's case is still ongoing, and now prosecutors can introduce the marijuana found in the vehicle as evidence in the trial. 

Drug Policy

Trump Transition Team Sets Meeting with Social Media, Tech Companies on Online Illicit Drug Sales. The transition team for President-elect Donald Trump (R) has sent invites to five tech and social media companies for a mid-month meeting about how to deal with the online sales of illegal drugs. The companies are Google, Meta, Microsoft, Snap, and Tik Tok. 

The transition team and a representative for first-term Trump drug czar Jim Carroll emailed the five companies last Thursday. They want to know what the companies' priorities are regarding how to address online drug sales and what barriers there are to addressing that issue. 

Nobody involved responded to a Reuters request for comment, but Trump has made the flow of fentanyl from Mexico a key issue going forward, and he posted on Truth Social that he "will be working on a large-scale United States Advertising Campaign, explaining how bad fentanyl is for people to use."

Some online companies have already come to the attention of regulators over online drug sales on their platforms. In January, eBay agreed to pay $59 million over Justice Department claims that it failed to do enough to block the sale of items such as pill presses to criminals who used them to make counterfeit drugs. Two months later, Justice Department prosecutors were reportedly looking into Meta and whether it profited from the sale of drugs on Facebook and Instagram.

Foreign Policy

Paraguay Antidrug Agency Halts Cooperation with US. The Washington Post is reporting that Paraguay's antidrug agency is halting cooperation with the US, in what the Post called "a significant blow to US efforts to curb organized crime in the country." Paraguay is not a major drug producer (other than marijuana) but has emerged as a key transit point for cocaine headed from South America to foreign markets. 

The decision to cut ties was made known to the DEA last week and will go into effect next year. It threatens several high-profile drug investigations, including that around Sebastián Marset, a fugitive drug trafficker who financed several professional soccer teams and demanded that he be allowed to play for them. The investigation into Marset is the largest of its kind in the country's history. 

The Paraguayan prosecutor in charge of the case, Deny Yoon Pak, said without cooperation with the US, "who is going to investigate for me to capture Sebastián Marset? Nobody."

A US official told the Post that joint American and Paraguayan investigators "has been the driving force behind the vast majority of Paraguay’s record-setting drug seizures and high-profile, complex drug trafficking investigations" like the one targeting Marset. "We are concerned about what it means that Paraguay’s antidrug agency no longer wants to be part of such a successful mechanism."

On Saturday, Paraguayan officials held a news conference where they confirmed that the antidrug agency, SENAD, would cease cooperating with the US, but said that antidrug efforts would continue, with the DEA "redirected" to work with the national police instead of SENAD. 

"It must be made clear that the DEA is not leaving," said Paraguayan Interior Minister Enrique Riera. "What is happening is a shift in the focus of the work."

A SENAD official said, "the order came from above." It was a "political" decision made by the government and the head of SENAD agreed with it, the official said. 

Several former Paraguayan officials said the move was an effort to protect top Paraguayan politicians with ties to drug trafficking. 

"They are cutting off the legs of the country’s best investigators to protect themselves," said one of those former officials.

"We have reached politicians. We have reached businessmen at the highest levels. We have detected the collaboration with organized criminals," prosecutor Yoon Pak said. Ending cooperation with the DEA would be "dangerous," he added.

Former Paraguayan president Horacio Cartes was hit with sanctions by the US last year for "rampant corruption," but remains the country's most influential politician. That made relations between the two countries more tense, Paraguayan officials said. Now that SENAD will no longer work with the DEA, those major investigations are imperiled. 

"It would be very unfortunate and a major setback for the country to set aside cooperation" with the DEA, former Paraguayan president, Marito Abdo, said  Friday. "Hopefully the current authorities can analyze and review this position in greater depth."

Harm Reduction

Rhode Island State-Sanctioned Safe Injection Site to Open This Week. The nation's first state-sanctioned safe injection site will open with a ribbon-cutting ceremony in Providence on Tuesday and will begin operations after receiving final licensing approval, which is expected shortly. The site will be operated by a non-profit organization, Project Weber/RENEW.

"I don’t think anybody wants to continue to see people die, and this is the evidence-based intervention that can supplement the work we’re doing with Narcan distribution and other types of harm reduction," said Lisa Peterson, the chief operating officer of VICTA, an addiction care provider partnering with Weber/RENEW to offer clinical services at the harm reduction center. 

"The consumption space is truly only one part of a much broader approach to harm reduction," she said, arguing the site will be beneficial not only for its clients but also for the entire neighborhood it serves. "But it has positive outcomes on the neighborhood in terms of cleanliness, in terms of your kid not walking to school and seeing somebody overdosed on the sidewalk."  

While this would be the first state-sanctioned safe injection site, a New York-based non-profit operates two sites in Manhattan with the approval of local authorities. It has been in operation since 2021. 

The Biden administration did not interfere with the New York sites, but the incoming Trump administration may have a different response. During Trump's first term, his Justice Department sued to stop a Philadelphia-based non-profit, SafeHouse, from opening there.  

While the site in Rhode Island is the only state-sanctioned one so far, Minnesota and Vermont have passed similar bills into law. Efforts to do the same in California have passed the legislature only to be vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D). 

"These are very well-studied interventions in Canada, in Europe, and there have been recent reports out of France which show significant reductions in emergency department visits and overdoses among people who use overdose prevention centers," said Brandon Marshall, a Brown professor who will lead the project in Rhode Island. "That being said, this is a unique context: We have by far the world’s most severe overdose crisis, a different healthcare system than any other developed nation, so I think it behooves us to understand how overdose prevention centers could operate effectively in a broader continuum of care here in the United States."