[UPDATE: the Utah Legislature passed, and the governor signed, a “compromise bill” that overwrites most of Proposition 2. More information and a new post will be forthcoming.] Utah just passed Proposition 2, the Utah Medical Cannabis Act. But, being Utah, I can promise you it is going to be a …
Probably once a week, I get asked if a California Medical Marijuana Card makes any difference in Utah. In a word, no. A medical card from a CA doctor does not allow you to have marijuana in Utah, or marijuana paraphernalia. Arguably, it does not even make it legal to …
Carbon County, Utah has no freeways, but it does have beautiful, windy Highway 6, the main route from Salt Lake City and points west to Denver and points east. Consequently, it gets a lot of traffic for a small, rural, county in the Utah desert. They also do a fair …
Can Police Have a Dog Sniff My Car Without My Permission? Can Police Search My Car without Permission Based on the “Alert” of a K-9 Unit? What if the Cops Said the Dog Alerted on My Car, but Then They Didn’t Find Any Drugs? What if the Cops Searched My …
The drive along Interstate 70, in central Utah, is remarkable for its unremarkableness. Just to the north, there are strikingly beautiful salt flats and the abrupt, snow-capped peaks of the Wasatch front. Just to the south are the red-rock deserts and world-famous national parks: Zion, Arches, Canyonlands. But I-70 threads …
If I ever give up this whole lawyering thing, I’m moving up to Park City to drive a tow-truck. Those guys have it good. During winter storms, there’s all the tourists on ski vacations getting their rental cars mired in snow-banks. And the rest of the time, there’s the drug arrests …
View Larger Map Tooele County, Utah is a large, rural county 30 minutes west of Salt Lake City, with a couple small towns (Grantsville, Tooele), some mountains, salt flats, and one large, busy, east-west Highway (I-80). Like many places around the state and country, the local law enforcement folks in …
According to an article published this summer in the Salt Lake Tribune, Utah leads the nation in convictions for federal cases of “simple possession.” Basically, this is the federal crime you get charged with if you’re found with a personal amount of weed on any federal land: national parks, national …
When I was growing up, people my parents’ age used to say “Don’t make a federal case out of it” as a way of saying “Don’t make this into a big deal when it isn’t.” As in, “Dad, Joey is using my football!” “Don’t make a federal case out of …
The Buddhists sometimes say that “the universe exists in a grain of sand” when explaining the concept of interdependence among all things. It seems the Utah legislature was strikingly Buddhist when drafting the Utah Drug Paraphernalia Act, because the way they defined “paraphernalia” makes paraphernalia exist in all things, too. …
© 2020 Dain Smoland, Attorney at Law PLLC, a Salt Lake City Criminal Defense Attorney