Utah’s High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas
By James Bradshaw | Published on October 21, 2011 | 0 Comments
In Utah, the state is cracking down on people who think they can traffic marijuana and cash between states (like California) that have essentially decriminalized this activity. According to James Bradshaw, a Salt Lake City criminal lawyer with the firm Brown, Bradshaw, and Moffat, these traffickers are in for a surprise as Utah’s state troopers make no distinctions or exceptions in their crackdowns.
One of the biggest ways the state of Utah is enforcing their no-marijuana-trafficking position is through the forfeiture and seizure of cars and assets from drivers passing through with lots of cash on their way to buy marijuana in California. This is an expression of Utah’s ultra-conservative law enforcement practices, particularly when it comes to the use and purchase of illegal substances like marijuana. According to Bradshaw, however, this ultra-conservative law enforcement approach is coupled with what may seem like a very liberal recent development in how Utah citizens feel about these tough forfeiture and seizure practices—and how they feel is actually an expression of their conservatism. Here’s how a Salt Lake City criminal lawyer explains this phenomenon:
Just as Utah’s conservative edge leads to tough crackdowns on marijuana-cash trafficking, that same conservative outlook is offended by the assumption of power taken by the state government over individual peoples’ lives. Right wing folks can be quite anti-government seizure, which leads to some progressive approaches to marijuana laws. As a result, the Utah legislature enacted laws trying to curb the government’s ability to seize the assets of drivers suspected of going to California for marijuana purchases. Nonetheless, the state government—in the form of the highway patrol—still acts aggressively to seize related assets when they deem it absolutely necessary.
This political battle plays out on the interstate, says Bradshaw. The California marijuana industry is huge, and plays a big role in terms of supplying customers across the entire country with marijuana. In addition, marijuana is semi-legal in California, according to the perspective of a criminal lawyer in Salt Lake City, where by comparison marijuana is as far as possible from being legal. Because marijuana is semi-legal in California, it can be grown there with little legal risk, but it has no legal way of being transported out of California and across Utah, says Bradshaw.
What happens is that individual drivers go to California to act as the transporters—either officially for someone else or personally. What this means for a Salt Lake City criminal lawyer is that large amounts of cash, obviously connected to the marijuana trade, are flowing through Utah’s interstate highways to and from California. This leads to the highway patrol stopping people seemingly without any regard, often lacking the kinds of probable cause they require to pull someone over. But when they pull someone over, they find the cash, or they find the marijuana. These discoveries lead them to seize the cash, the marijuana, and even the car. And that’s the big problem a Salt Lake City criminal lawyer handles—that invasion of privacy and trespass of the laws dictating who can be searched and arrested and why.
*Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. You should not rely on this article as a legal opinion on any specific facts or circumstances, and you should not act upon this information without seeking professional counsel. Publication of this article and your receipt of this article does not create an attorney-client relationship.