MN Supreme Court Opinion Says Smell Not Enough To Trigger Search

(St. Paul, MN) — Minnesota’s Supreme Court says the smell of marijuana is not enough to allow law enforcement officers to search a vehicle. An opinion issued yesterday examined a case from 2021 where an officer in Litchfield conducted a search based on the smell of marijuana in a vehicle. Attorneys for the state maintained that the smell was enough to establish probable cause for the search. But the court found that previous cases where the smell of alcohol wasn’t enough to justify a search also applied to cases involving marijuana. A state law allowing possession of certain amounts of recreational marijuana went into effect last month.