(KWNO)-On August 1 Minnesotans 21 and older can legally possess and use marijuana. The Winona Police Department is gearing up for legalization and Chief Tom Williams says there are a lot of questions around driving under the influence of marijuana but his officers should be prepared.
“Our officers have been enforcing impaired driving laws ever since DUI has become a topic. With the increase of marijuana and other illegal drugs like heroin and methamphetamine as well as prescription medications, drivers are often driving under the influence of those substances and our officers have learned to recognize those and are testing and evaluating and making arrests,” says Williams.
But it could be challenging for law enforcement officers to definitively determine if a driver is high because there’s no roadside test for marijuana like there is for alcohol. There is a pilot program to develop a roadside saliva test.
“The thing with that is it’s completely voluntary, the driver does not have to give a sample to the officer and if they so choose those results will not be allowed in any court of law, they’re just using it for data collection,” says Williams.
Local city governments and municipalities will control where people can smoke marijuana. Right now, Winona does not have any bans or restrictions so marijuana can generally be smoked anywhere a person could smoke a cigarette. A problematic loophole in the new law is the lack of punishment for underage people caught smoking marijuana.
“I’ve had this conversation this week with some of our prosecutor. An individual is walking down the street with an open container of beer and smoking a marijuana cigarette you can issue them a citation for possessing the open container of alcohol which is a misdemeanor and even though it’s illegal for the person under 21 years of age to possess that marijuana cigarette there’s no penalty for it,” says Williams.
Click below to listen to our entire interview with Winona Police Chief Tom Williams.
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