SACRAMENTO — The California Highway Patrol has ordered its officers to stop confiscating medical marijuana during routine traffic stops, a victory for patients hoping to win broader acceptance of the controversial medicine from balky police departments around the state.
Highway Patrol officials sent out a bulletin last week to field commanders spelling out the policy shift, which would allow patients to travel on California's highways with up to 8 ounces of marijuana as long as they have a certified user identification card or documented physician's approval.
Patient advocates say the change will make the state's highways a "safe haven" for those who use marijuana with a physician's permission. They also hope the shift by the CHP sets an example for law enforcement agencies around California.
"This is going to send a very clear message: The constitutionality of patients needs to be protected," said Steph Sherer, executive director of Americans for Safe Access, a marijuana patients group that sued the CHP to force the policy change. "Our hope is this will ripple around the state."
Lt. Joe Whiteford, a CHP spokesman, called the policy shift "a revision" needed in part because of confusion among rank-and-file officers over a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
The high court declared in June that medical marijuana laws in a dozen states, including California, don't protect patients or suppliers from federal prosecution. But the ruling did not sweep away state medical marijuana laws and had no effect on local and state police such as the CHP.
Although voters legalized medical marijuana in California nearly nine years ago, police statewide have wrangled with activists over how to enforce the law.
Police officers have griped in particular about the difficulty of distinguishing true patients from recreational pot smokers.
With the Highway Patrol's new medical marijuana policy, officers in the field "have got their marching orders," Whiteford said. "Now they're pretty clear what to do."
For the last fiscal year, ending in July, Americans for Safe Access collected reports from 457 patients and caregivers who were arrested or had their medical marijuana seized by police officers in California.
About a quarter of those cases involved the Highway Patrol, and the rest were spread among police and sheriff's departments in 48 of California's 58 counties.
