The Cannabis Reform Act of 2023 receives new clarifications from the Appellate Court of Maryland on the application of stop and search restrictions and the odor of cannabis.
The Appellate Court of Maryland issued an opinion last month, holding that a new Maryland law, HB 556/SB 516 of 2023, preventing police from stopping or searching a vehicle based solely on the odor of cannabis does not apply retroactively. The opinion, authored by Senior Judge Robert Zarnoch, was filed on June 27th. The ruling came out of a case concerning a Baltimore man arrested and charged in 2021 with various narcotics-related offenses following a traffic stop where police then detected the odor of cannabis.
The court concluded that state lawmakers expressed in the text of the law the intent for the bill to not be applied retroactively. If this were not the case and the circumstances fell under one of the three major exemptions that would lead to the presumption of retroactive application, then the outcome might have been different. The Maryland Supreme Court has not weighed this question yet as to whether the law should be applied retroactively.
