For a police officer, a day on the job doesn’t typically include flipping through Dope Magazine, taking a field trip to a marijuana dispensary or rubbing shoulders with a group of volunteer stoners. Chris Halsor, a Colorado attorney with two decades of criminal law experience, is changing that.
“Legalization of marijuana was a big paradigm shift for law enforcement,” says Halsor, who began teaching about cannabis in 2014. “When it was totally illegal, if you smelled it [or] saw a roach on the floorboard of a car, that instantly got you into cars without warrants. That instantly led to arrest.”
Nowadays, it’s not so simple.
Legalization of cannabis is sweeping across the country — but driving under its influence remains illegal. That means in the 36 states where residents are allowed to take a toke either medically or recreationally, law enforcement are laboring to determine just how impaired the person behind the wheel is.
