Arizona Border Patrol Conducts Illegal Searches to Bust Pot Smokers

Just a heads-up to those tokers in Phoenix, AZ (in the United States) -- when crossing the border, make sure that your car is clean. The Border Patrol has taken to stopping all inbound cars, and letting sniffer dogs find those who choose to smoke pot. Granted, this is most likely illegal under the Fourth Ammendment to the US Constitution ("The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated") -- but that isn't stopping them from working on busting even small-time smokers:

"If we get just a pipe, they are getting written up," [...] "If it's a seed, they are getting written up."

Even Justice Clarence Thomas (an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court) stated (in regards to a separate case):

Indeed, I rather doubt that the framers of the Fourth Amendment would have considered 'reasonable' a program of indiscriminate stops of individuals not suspected of wrongdoing.

I'll spare you my thoughts on the Constitutional implications of such a program -- the moral of the story is that if you toke up in Arizona, make sure that your car is clean.

Yours in Peace,
Julius

If you liked that post, then try these...

Medical Marijuana News Update on December 8th, 2007

Marijuana for Chemotherapy Patients on December 25th, 2007

How to Smoke Pot and Not Get Caught on December 19th, 2007

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 20th, 2008 at 9:51 am and is filed under Legal, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Arizona Border Patrol Conducts Illegal Searches to Bust Pot Smokers”

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DailySmoke Says:
April 6th, 2008 at 7:16 pm
Drug Dogs are not considered a search under the 4th amendment....
Toke up!
Julius Says:
April 12th, 2008 at 8:43 am
It's debatable as to whether the use of drug dogs on a citizen without probable cause constitutes a 4th Amendment violation. My guess is that it does, but I have not seen any legal precedent either way. If someone finds a court case which would indicate how such a search would be viewed by the US legal system, please let me know, and I'll post an update.

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