Drug Crimes

If you are charged with a marijuana DWI, the State’s manner of proof is far different – and frankly harder – than a standard alcohol-related DWI. The primary reason is that the State is forced to prove actual impairment and cannot r…

The Supreme Court recently issued a critical decision that will have wide-ranging impact that coincides with the new legalization of marijuana. As outlined previously in this blog, the Court of Appeals ruled that the mere odor of marijuana – wi…

As the world slowly but surely progresses to an era when marijuana will be legalized by every State, the courts are lagging behind, as usual. The courts have always been slow in responding to the evolution of things, such as trying to figure out the…

Drug possession – even marijuana (for now) – is still a very serious crime in Minnesota, with most being felony level offenses. There are two types of possession that the State can pursue when charging you with a drug possession crime: ac…

Are hemp and other products such as delta-8-tetrahydrocannabinol (Delta-8) actually legal in Minnesota? In short, yes. But the newly released opinion in Minnesota Court of Appeals State v. Nixon allows the State to charge an individual with criminal…

With 4/20 having come and gone recently, we thought it’d be an appropriate time to discuss the marijuana DUI laws in Minnesota. Certainly, with the likely legalization of marijuana in the not-too-distant future, marijuana DUI’s will becom…

Minnesota’s sentencing laws used to be more penal than just, particularly in the everlasting ‘war on drugs.’ Sentencing reform in 2016 provided some help in stopping the law from being overly punitive toward controlled substance cri…

This week, the Minnesota Court of Appeals issued an important decision, pulling back the expanding usage of drug detection dogs for searches of controlled substances. In State v. Edstrom, the Court of Appeals held that law enforcement must get a warr…