PHOENIX — State lawmakers have no legal right to make it a crime for medical marijuana users to possess the drug on college campuses, an attorney for a student who was arrested is arguing to the Arizona Supreme Court.
In new legal filings, Thomas Dean is urging the justices to void the conviction of Andre Maestas. He was arrested by Arizona State University campus police in 2014 when they found 0.4 of a gram of the drug in his dorm room.
Dean said the presence of the drug is not in question. In fact, it was Maestas who told the officers about the marijuana.
But the attorney said the 2010 initiative which legalized the possession of marijuana for medical use had only a limited number of places where people could not use the drugs. That includes public schools and prisons.
That law does not, however, include university campuses. Yet lawmakers voted anyway in 2012 to extend the scope of the law.
Dean said what’s wrong with that is that the initiative is subject to the constitutional Voter Protection Act. It specifically prohibits lawmakers from repealing or sharply altering anything approved on the ballot.
He acknowledged there is an exception for any change that “furthers the purpose” of the original law. But Dean said a plain reading of what voters approved shows that what legislators approved in 2012 does not fit within that definition.
“The purpose of this act is to protect patients with debilitating medical conditions, as well as their physicians and providers, from arrest and prosecution, criminal and other penalties,” Dean quoted from the 2010 law. And he said that expanding the list of places where medical marijuana is not permitted to include college campuses “obviously” does not further the purpose of what voters approved.
Maestas was arrested on a charge of obstructing traffic after ASU police said they found him sitting in an intersection.
When a search of his wallet turned up a medical marijuana card, Maestas admitted to having the drug in his room. That allowed police to obtain a search warrant, turning up less than 0.02 of an ounce, far below the 2½ ounces medical marijuana users can legally possess.
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Dean Fink found Maestas guilty of drug possession, fined him $1,000 and placed him on unsupervised probation.
