Utah’s Cultural Clash
By James Bradshaw | Published on October 21, 2011 | 0 Comments
According to James Bradshaw of the law firm Brown, Bradshaw, and Moffat, Utah’s marijuana laws are the toughest in the country. Few Salt Lake City marijuana lawyers would say there are other states that are tougher than Utah on this issue. But this characteristic of local law does lead Bradshaw to regard his state’s system as very intriguing because it reveals an interesting cultural clash worth exploring.
If you were to take a map of the western United States that was marked for how the states characterized marijuana in their legal systems, you’d see that every state except three—Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho—have either decriminalized marijuana or made its medical use legal. That triangle—the Utah-Wyoming-Idaho anti-marijuana triangle—remains a kind of island of conservatism with regard to marijuana in a sea of states that have taken a much more laid-back—even friendlier—approach.
What has led Utah to remain so steadfast in its conservative approach, even to the point of rejecting the progressive trends of its western neighbors? Working as a Salt Lake City marijuana lawyer has shown Bradshaw that Utah continues to operate with a war-on-drugs attitude. That, coupled with its relatively conservative legislative culture, keeps it super tough on marijuana usage, possession, and purchase.
While this conservative nature plays out every day in realms beyond drug trafficking, a marijuana lawyer in Salt Lake City can say that there’s nonetheless a nascent shift in cultural attitudes—a shift somewhat away from the ultra-conservative approach. This is happening with judges. Many of them are becoming more and more sympathetic to the negative effects of the conservative marijuana laws, says Bradshaw. As a result, judges are ruling in such a way that they often don’t want to be too punitive with defendants. A Salt Lake City marijuana lawyer could even say that some judges are becoming sympathetic to marijuana use—but this is probably because they are sympathetic to the punishments that accompany it: The laws are indeed tough—Utah has a mandatory drivers license suspension for those found with even small amounts of marijuana on them. Such possession could even lead to a felony.
But what really seems to be tipping the balance lately is how aggravated people are with the tough seizure and forfeiture rights the state takes with those found trafficking marijuana in some form. Frustration with this invasion into the lives of citizens is leading to an erosion in the 1980s war-on-drugs attitudes that led Utah into the marijuana-crackdown camp in the first place.
Fortunately—and ironically—Utah also has some of the best laws in the country for getting that seized property back, says Bradshaw. That fact sometimes becomes the point from which defendants are able to fight the state’s allegations against them.
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