Cannabis Law Prof Blog

A conversation with a Dallas Police Department Sergeant

Lary Nichols is currently a Sergeant of the Dallas Police Department. Nichols, like his father and grandfather before him, was born and has lived his entire life in Dallas, Texas. He attended Lake Highland high school and had a part-time job selling cars at his father’s used car lot.

After high school, he headed to boot camp to join the Marine Corps. Because his goal had always been to become a Dallas police officer, Nichols joined the Marine’s military police to gain the necessary experience. After four years of service, Nichols left the Marines to pursue his dream. But unlike today’s standards—where recruits need to either have earned a minimum of 45 hours of college credit or have 3 years of military experience—DPD strictly required the minimum college credit then. Thus, Nichols took the requisite courses at El Centro, Dallas’s County Community College, before being admitted into Dallas’s police academy in 1992.

Upon graduation, Nichols worked full-time patrolling Southeast Dallas, until he was promoted to Senior Corporal in 1997. There, he worked with Dallas’s K-9 Unit for three years until he returned back to patrol. After four years, Nichols was promoted to Sergeant in 2004. As Sergeant, Nichols was placed in charge of one Dallas SWAT unit and has played a pivotal role in organizing the city’s security measures for large events such as marathons and protests. Currently, DPD is considering promoting Sergeant Nichols again, this time to Lieutenant.

Sergeant Nichols has been married since 1988, and has two children. His son recently graduated from Dallas’s police academy this year, following in his father’s footsteps; his daughter graduated from Texas A&M and is currently attending nursing school in Dallas.   

Q: What training regarding marijuana detection and how to handle situations involving marijuana have you experienced?

A: In 1992, when I was in the academy, they had a narcotics officer come in and teach various things about the drugs we should expect to confront on the street. This included street names, what to look for; they also did something called a “controlled burn,” which is where they burned DEA-grade marijuana, so we could recognize the smell and be better equipped to testify about it in court if we made a traffic stop and we smelt marijuana. But I think that practice ended because now everyone knows what it smells like; plus, your trainer will say “Hey, that’s marijuana” while on the street. This was followed by update-training every few years. I’ve had some outside narcotics training, which consisted of either eight or forty-hour courses to improve narcotic detection and intervention. But most of my experience has come from making arrests and testifying in court.

Q: Do you believe that the methods currently used to detect whether someone is high on marijuana are effective?

A: I don’t think enough. Although there’s a lot of training to detect people high on marijuana, there probably isn’t enough to be adequate.

Q: Would you be open to police departments adopting a marijuana breathalyzer that would measure a person’s current level of THC?

A: Yes, I would. I think that would be a great tool. Especially as we move towards more states legalizing marijuana, law enforcement needs an effective method, similar to a BAC breathalyzer, to detect whether someone is operating a vehicle under the influence.

Q: What problems do you personally perceive regarding people using marijuana?

A: I actually think the use of marijuana is less problematic than alcohol. People don’t smoke weed and go beat their wives, but they do that with alcohol. But some problems associated with marijuana are long-term. The health effects are probably worse for you than smoking cigarettes; obviously there are cancer concerns. Also, marijuana tends to dull people’s initiative and motivation. From my high school experience, there were those stoner friends who smoked a lot of weed; they weren’t go-getters. Especially if people smoke too much. Overall, I believe the health effects and dulling of people’s initiative and ambition are the biggest problems. Also, people think they can smoke and then drive, but they can’t. Their reaction times are slow; their judgement is impaired. So that’s another large issue.

Q: Do you believe marijuana is a “gateway drug?”

A: I do; especially for younger people. It’s a way for them to start using illegal drugs. They feel like “Oh, I can smoke marijuana and go to school and then wake up the next day and feel fine? Well, maybe I can do this cocaine and pills too.” Adults though have a little more maturity. Similar to having a drinking age of 21, once people are more mature they realize “Yeah, I can smoke weed, but I’m not going to jump to heroin.” But I do believe it is a gateway drug for the more vulnerable population and younger people to lead them to more addictive drugs.

Q: Do you believe marijuana should be legal in any form? Explain.

A: We spend a lot of resources and a lot of money in the criminal justice system and law enforcement on enforcing marijuana laws. But I think that money could be spent better elsewhere. I think alcohol is more dangerous than marijuana. So personally, I’m not opposed to legalizing it. But the problem I have is kids getting a hold of it. I know that’s a big problem in states that have already done so. Similar to getting older people to buy you beer here. I think marijuana is extremely detrimental to the young population. I’ve seen studies where it affects their mental and physical development. So, if it is legalized, it needs to be strictly controlled. I’m not opposed to it, and I think it will be legalized eventually because it doesn’t make sense all the time, effort, and money being spent putting people in jail. We are slowly reducing the penalties and enforcement of it. We should stop beating around the bush and just legalize, regulate, and tax it. We always talk about personal freedoms, well people should be free to do what they want. You can have an abortion and kill a baby, but you can’t smoke a joint in your own house. I think it’s kind of hypocritical; it’s similar to prohibition in the 1920s, which didn’t work at all.

Q: Do you believe your job would be easier if marijuana was legal for adults 21 and older?

A: There’s a catch 22 about that. Law enforcement would spend less time bringing people to jail for marijuana offenses, but there would be more people under the influence causing problems, so I don’t know if it would make our job that much easier. We would still have people driving impaired and stealing to get more marijuana. Especially initially after legalization, I believe there would be a lot more people using it, because believe it or not, there are people who refrain from smoking because it is illegal.

Q: In a given week, how many of your on-duty calls had some relation to marijuana?

A: I’m not in patrol right now, but back in the 1990s in Southeast Dallas, I would say probably 60-70% of what I did there involved some aspect of marijuana. Whether it was present, they were using it, or they were under the influence. So, it was consistently prevalent throughout my time patrolling.

Q: Do you believe marijuana enforcement has disproportionately impacted African Americans?

A: It probably does in a way, but ultimately, I believe it disproportionately impacts lower socioeconomic groups. Poorer people don’t tend to have private places to smoke, so they drive around or smoke in public place like the streets or in parks. This leaves them more vulnerable to getting caught by us. Whereas, someone with means and wealth will have a house or other place they can smoke where law enforcement won’t be able to catch them. Unfortunately, this is true for law enforcement in a lot of regards, not just marijuana.

Q: Which do you believe is more dangerous: marijuana or alcohol consumption?

A: In my experience, it’s clearly alcohol. If you look at traffic accidents, domestic violence, or other violent crimes, a lot of them involve alcohol abuse. Alcohol, especially in the short term, is worse. I don’t know if we have sufficiently studied the health effects of marijuana for the long term. I’ve heard there are things in marijuana that cause cancer, worse than in cigarettes.

Q: How do you think your job will be affected if marijuana is nationally legalized?

A: I think it will be a mixed bag. There will be some things that will be easier, some harder. Obviously, we will have more people using it, initially at least. But hopefully there will be more people using it responsibly. I think it will be a learning curve; I’m interested to learn from law enforcement in the legalized states on how they are dealing with these issues.

Wildfires in California expose the Vulnerability of the State’s Marijuana Industry

The devastating fires in California this month shed a spotlight on the lack of insurance coverage the marijuana industry receives. Because marijuana is still considered a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act, it is almost impossible for farmers to insure the plant. The Cannabist reports that marijuana’s federally illegal status:

makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for most of the marijuana businesses affected by those disasters to access crop insurance, emergency bank loans, and disaster relief assistance available to other agriculture sectors.

Meanwhile, marijuana’s legal limbo has also scared away many major insurance companies from offering their services to the cannabis industry. For instance, Lloyd’s of London, a giant in the specialty insurance and reinsurance market, stopped insuring all cannabis operations in 2015, “unless and until the sale of either medicinal or recreational marijuana is formally recognized by the Federal government as legal.”

During the month of October, the fires destroyed at least 34 marijuana farms, burning thousands of acres of land on which
the marijuana was growing. Unfortunately, the farmers that own this land have been left with almost no recourse due to the preventative federal laws, despite the fact that many of the farmers have spent thousands of dollars to ensure compliance with state law.

Last week, California’s state insurance commissioner, Dave Jones, encouraged commercial insurance companies to insure marijuana businesses that are in compliance with state law, reasoning that “it’s [their] job as state officials “to make sure [they] successfully implement the legalization of cannabis.” It remains to be seen whether any insurance companies will accept his pleas, but Jones’s efforts have come too late for farmers in the current predicament.

Given the uncertain future of insurance for marijuana and marijuana related businesses, California may be able to take a note from Colorado in order to partially protect the industry from natural disasters in the future. Gerry Jones and Mark McNeely, employees of Cannabis Insurance Solutions in Denver, explained that although outdoor agricultural programs are federally insured and back, there is some leeway when it comes to indoor agricultural programs.

You have crop insurance and general liability for the building and professional liability for the people who come in and spray the crops and those kind of things. So the full gamut of coverages any other businesses would have access to," Jones said.

In Colorado, all dispensaries and cultivation operations are licensed with the state, which provides additional funding. Therefore, a business is covered if it is destroyed by a natural disaster, as long as the business is insured. It may be worth it for California to take a look at this indoor-farm workaround as a way to recoup some losses in the case of a future natural disaster, at least until there is a response from the insurance industry after the requests made by Commissioner Jones.

--Taylor Wood

Marijuana’s Positive Effects on Painkiller Use

According to The Washington Post, a recently-published study in the American Journal of Public Health suggests that the legalization of marijuana in Colorado has reversed the trend of increasing deaths caused by Opioid overdose in the state:

While numerous studies have shown an association between medical marijuana legalization and opioid overdose deaths, this report is one of the first to look at the impact of recreational marijuana laws on opioid deaths.

Marijuana is often highly effective at treating the same types of chronic pain that patients are often prescribed opiates for. Given the choice between marijuana and opiates, many patients appear to be opting for the former.

. . .

Overall, after controlling for both medical marijuana and the prescription-drug-monitoring change, the study found that after Colorado implemented its recreational marijuana law, opioid deaths fell by 6.5 percent in the following two years.

The study was conducted over a two-year period after recreational marijuana retailers began operating in Colorado in 2014. Although the study is only preliminary, the results demonstrate that marijuana may be a safer alternative to other pain-relieving drugs that can result in fatal overdose. Opioid-related deaths steadily rose in Colorado since 2000 until the sale of recreational marijuana began in 2014.

Although the correlation is worth looking into—as the fate of marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act is being heavily debated—it is important to note that the study does not guarantee the decrease in opioid-related deaths is caused by the legalization of recreational marijuana in the state. The authors also cautioned that “while legal marijuana may reduce opioid deaths it could also be increasing fatalities elsewhere — on Colorado's roads, for instance.” Still, given the positive outlook, states and the federal government should devote more resources to researching marijuana’s positive effects as opposed to other drugs. Hey, even Jeff Sessions somewhat agrees.

 

--Taylor Wood

'Halloweed' Candy: scare tactic or real danger?

Since marijuana was legalized in 2012, a running joke depicting strangers slipping marijuana-infused candy to young trick-or-treaters continues to be told. But proponents of legalization are expressing their frustration with such myths. They insist that there has been zero evidence of this ever happening and argue that opponents of legalization use this as a scare tactic to prevent legalizing marijuana. The Associated Press for Snopes reports: 

Advocates say marijuana candy has seemingly become the new “razor blades in the apples” Halloween urban myth, with police around the country sharing the message despite the lack of any known cases.

 

Sharon Lauchaire, a spokeswoman for the [New Jersey] attorney general, said there have been “several instances” in the state and elsewhere of children becoming ill after eating edible marijuana. She declined to respond to follow-up questions to cite specific cases and evidence of anyone doing this on Halloween.

Although politicians and law enforcement officials are unable to cite instances of strangers preying on innocent children, they maintain that such warnings are still necessary. Al Della Fave, a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office in Ocean County, New Jersey, admitted that the likelihood of a stranger giving a trick-or-treater marijuana-infused candy is "very slim." But he insists that the official warning to "check your kids' candy[.] If something's not in a manufacturer's wrapper...throw it out" remains warranted.

Such concerns are exacerbated by the extreme similarities between marijuana edibles and regular candy. Bill Brothers, owner of the Encanto Greens Dispensary in Arizona, admits that he probably could not tell the difference between marijuana gummy bears and regular ones if they were side by side. Brothers also believes that these 'Halloweed' fears could be relieved if the marijuana industry improved the labeling of its edibles. For example, the industry could increase the size of any marijuana-related words on the packaging and stop designing the wrapping like candy wrappers. 

Finally, anti-legalization activists cite hundreds of childhood marijuana exposures each year. German Lopez of Vox reports on why opponents of legalization insist on such warnings:

[Children being exposed to marijuana-infused candy is] an ongoing concern no matter what day of the year it is. Halloween is the unofficial candy holiday, so people should take extra precautions even if the October 31sts of the past haven’t shown up anything yet.

If parents of young trick-or-treaters are still worried about strangers using their expensive edibles to poison children, they should take solace in the fact that there has never been a confirmed case of someone dying from an overdose of marijuana. Further, the only known case of a child dying from poisoned candy occurred in 1974 when the culprit was none other than the child's own father.

 

--Zachary Ford