Well, we’re back live here uh at uh Kernney Law. Uh as you guys know, we’re doing the Now We Defend podcast. This week’s topic is going to be all about the drugs. So, there’s a lot of topics to talk about with drugs. Obviously, there’s a lot of drugs um that we need to talk about, but I think in the law you can kind of uh feed the whole category of drugs, at least is the way the law treats it into two categories. You got marijuana, which is kind of treated very differently from a lot of other drugs, and then essentially all other drugs. There’s also kind of a caveat to that. There’s really two major ways drugs are charged. Um they are charged with, you know, possession, simple possession, as well as uh what we call PWID, which is a felony level charge. Uh possession with intent to distribute, which also encompasses things like manufacturing drugs, um like for instance, marijuana, growing it, um possession with intent to deliver, and of course, delivery itself. Uh we’ve got uh Justin and Tim here with me. You guys want to say hi real quick? What’s [clears throat] up, everybody? What’s going on? All right. Okay. So, um, as it relates to our podcast, I’ve been reminded, I always need to tell people, make sure you’re subscribing to us on YouTube. Uh, hit that little like button at the bottom. Follow us on all of our socials. We’re on Instagram, Tik Tok, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Of course, if you leave a review for us or you leave a comment, we will interact with you. We actually love that. So, if you’re able to do that, please do that. That’s kind of part of the reason we do this. We want to interact with the public, interact with people on these topics. So, please feel free to do that. We will connect with you. Um, again, I’m going to remind everybody as I did at the very end of our last podcast, but I wanted to put it in the beginning of this podcast. Um, we are doing something a little kind of game in each podcast, there’s going to be something different about our studio now that we’ve kind of finalized everything in each podcast. That could be the changing of an item, the moving of something, could be something specifically different around about one of the the podcasters themselves, myself, Tim, Justin. Um, so keep an eye out for those things. If you notice it, leave a comment about it and specifically tell us why it’s relevant to the topic that we’re discussing in the podcast that week. If you do that, and you’re right, I will be randomly selecting an individual to send some merch to. uh whether it’s Kernney Law merch, whether it’s Now We Defend podcast or just some funky funny merch uh regarding maybe the topic that we’re discussing that week. So, keep an eye on that. Uh I’ll make contact with you if you’re the winner and we’ll make sure we get you the merch. Okay, guys. So, uh let’s go to everybody here. Uh topic of drugs. I want to start with um talking about kind of the category of marijuana, right? Um, I kind of touched on what kind of drug charges could be, the difference between small amount of marijuana, possession of drugs generally, as well as PWID type offenses. Let’s talk about marijuana first. Um, [clears throat] Justin, we’ll open up with you here. Uh, marijuana obviously very different in the way it’s charged. There’s actually specific charges for marijuana. Tell me about that a little bit and, uh, let’s kick it off with that. Yeah, I think we’ll start with, you know, just a small amount of marijuana. a small amount of marijuana in Pennsylvania is essentially 30 grams or less uh for personal use. Uh so that’s something, you know, we’ll we’ll get into a little bit as far as personal use versus the possession with intent to deliver, distribute, etc. Um but yeah, and Justin, do you happen to know how much in ounces, say 30 g is? Did you have you ever done that conversion? Yeah, I think it’s just under an ounce. Just under an ounce. No, I’m sorry. Six. Oh boy. Tell you what, Tim, look it up. Look it up on your phone. Let’s see what the conversion is from 30 g to how many ounces that is. Cuz I think a lot of I think it’s 32. Yeah. My my chemistry teacher in high school used to say every good drug dealer knows there’s 28 gram in an ounce. 28. What? 28. Okay. So, you were right actually. Um 30 grams is close to just just over an ounce. Okay. So, that gives people a good idea of like if and what that means is if if you get charged with more than 30 grams, you’re found with more than 30 grams of marijuana, that’s a completely different charge. Yeah. And I think, you know, depending on how much more they may still give you a small amount charge, uh especially if you’ve got no criminal history or you know, you were cooperative um and there’s no other uh items uh use paraphernalia, etc. And you know, segueing into another charge that’s very common with marijuana is is possession of drug paraphernalia. Before we jump into that though, what you were just saying there about the cops might still charge you a small amount if you’re over 30 g. I think some of that just deals with the fact that in the mind of the public at this point, marijuana is kind of treated differently than, you know, everything. And that that’s due to some changes in federal law. We can touch on that a little bit as it relates to the scheduling of medical marijuana federally, but that is different than how medical marijuana is scheduled now in Pennsylvania. So, I don’t want to get too into the weeds on that. We can maybe touch on that later. But the bottom line here is that society does view marijuana even though the laws are still in Pennsylvania very strict about marijuana. So society and that means people on the street, police who are on the beat, uh attorneys, judges, jurors, uh everybody I think views marijuana a little differently than they did even 5 years ago. Absolutely. The ha the habits are different too in terms of like distribution behaviors. So that and that the other thing that people reap the benefit of when it comes to marijuana is there’s technically three different ways they could charge you because if they think it’s over 30 grams and you were delivering or you were part of like a dealing situation. I mean they they may be able to charge you with the felony drug but they could also charge you with the small amount. And then there’s also the in between which is just possession of controlled substance which is the gray area between anything over 30 g and distribution. So they could drop it down and the penalties for each of those drop down as well. So there’s wiggle room for them to negotiate. They don’t have to stick with the felony. Yeah. And that comes to like when we get into court on these with our clients like they could plead you down to A6. Exactly. Yeah. And we’re dealing with the cops. We’re dealing with the prosecutors like getting these deals that are I mean going from a felony to a misdemeanor or to a small amount of weed. That’s huge. I mean that’s a big difference. And you figure from from the felony I mean your your maximum could be 10 years, right? depending on what it is or if you’ve had more than one could be at least 10 years. Whereas the misdemeanor, even if you have a prior possession of a controlled substance, I mean, you’re talking about 3 years as a maximum at that point. So, it could be one year or it could be three if you got more than Tim’s talking about maximums here. This is not what normally happens to people. They don’t go to jail normally for 10 years or three years or anything. But the maximum for small amount is 30 days. So, I mean really of incarceration, right? Yeah. And so the difference between the possession of a controlled substance statute and the possession of a small amount statute is for all intents and purposes whether you’re getting probation or not. Right. Really? Let’s hone in on on the weed though, okay? Let’s hone in on on the marijuana and let’s even go a little bit lower than that and let’s just focus right now on small amount of marijuana possession. So again, that’s under 30 grams. Okay. Now again, we said the police sometimes, even if you’re over 30 grams in society today, will still charge that. Absolutely. But if they don’t, that other charge would then be just general possession under subsection A16, which is the general possession statute in Pennsylvania. That’s what you would be charged if you were charged with other drugs, too, like cocaine, heroin, fentanyl, things like that under simple possession. But again, hone in on just small amount of marijuana because there’s so many different options for marijuana as to how we fix those charges for our clients. Um, so again, I go I want to pivot back to you, Justin, and I want you to tell us about things like section 17, ARD, getting charges reduced to summary offenses like disorderly conduct. Walk us through all that and how we play that out in court, actually. Absolutely. And, uh, just like we talked about pretty much in every episode, you know, lawyer up early, get an attorney, you know, call us when when you think you’re getting charges or if they cited you that day, call us. Uh because the earlier we get involved and can, you know, set you on the right path and uh maybe set you up with a class or two, maybe an evaluation, uh it’s likely that we can get you um some diversion. Yeah, absolutely. And again, I’m going to jump in here cuz we say this almost in every episode, and this literally is not just a plug for you to go hire a lawyer, but it actually will help your case. Please, if you’re charged with a crime, at least give us a call. let us talk to you early because once we figure out what the issue is, a lot of times we can literally explain to you the road map to literally save your criminal record, literally fix this for you. Literally make sure you don’t get incarcerated, you know, and save a lot of those indirect consequences, too, that can come in your life from having a criminal record. So, it’s not just a plug. We really mean that with sincerity. Like, please call us. Let’s at least chat um and figure out where we go from there. And maybe we get hired, maybe we don’t. That doesn’t really, you know, that’s not the point here. The point is talk to somebody who has the knowledge that can help you make sure you get out of or at least make better the situation that you’re in so you can save the bad things that can happen to you. So Justin, what are some of those things like when it comes to this small amount of marijuana as I mentioned earlier? Yeah. So we have a section 17 disposition which essentially you agree to pay the costs and uh you’re placed on a term of non-reporting probation. Uh, and if you pay that off and you know, don’t commit any new crimes, it gets expuned or excuse me, it gets dismissed and expuned. Uh, the only issue with that, Justin, that’s automatic. With section 17 and I I know what issue you’re going to talk about there. So, tell me about that. What’s the issue with that? The issue with that is that can only happen at the Court of Common, please. Yeah. So, that’s guys, that’s the higher level of court. This type of a disposition, section 17, which again, as Justin said, leads to a complete dismissal of your charges and automatic expungement. no c criminal record, clean sweep. All you got to do, pay your court costs off and stay out of trouble for a little period of time. You’re on a little bit of what we call nonreporting probation, which means you don’t have to check in with a PO. You just got to be a good boy or good girl and and stay out of trouble and get your cost paid. But again, you can’t do that at the magistrate the way the law is right now. And that I talk to magistrates all the time about this. They hate that, too. Yeah. You know, but the rules are procedurally they can’t do it. And there might be a push to change that, but right now we have to move the case to the next level and do it there. Yeah. And I think, you know, it would be nice if they could do it. Uh because that would mean even less cases going [clears throat] up to the court of common please. And I mean there are a good chunk of of cases that get resolved that way. Um you also obviously have ARD like we talked about last week. Uh but again have to go up to the court of common please. Um but again you get the the dismissal and expungement as well. But ARD, between ARD and section 17, I mean, let’s be honest, we love the ARD program. It fixes a lot of types of cases, but you got to do work and it costs more. And it costs more and you got to do more, you know, and do you want to burn an ARD on a small, you know, when section 17 is probably your better bet. Yeah. And you can’t get a section 17 if you’ve done AD, but you can get ARD if you’ve done section 17. Yeah. And that’s important for the future. Yeah. Once you do a section 17, you can’t do another section 17. But once you do ARD, they usually don’t let you into ARD again. So I see people actually outside of 10 years, you can outside of 10 years. Yeah. But I mean, I see people come to me all the time that have a little weed charge. And I’m looking at it and I look at their record and they go, yeah, I did um I did ARD for my last weed charge. And I’m like, well, that just took ARD off the table and also took section 17 off the table. So it’s a whole different analysis then. So the bottom line here between ARD and section 17, if you can get section 17, it’s better. The other limiting factor is some counties don’t do section 17. That’s true. We’re Section 17 is very uh common in York County for the right cases. You can’t have any criminal record at all to qualify for section 17. This isn’t just weed. This isn’t just any other drug charge. Any criminal record, you’re out of the running for section 17. And that might be when you need to pivot to ARD. Correct. But there’s possibly even a better outcome. Justin, kick it in. What’s the better possibly better outcome? Yeah, if if we’re involved early enough, and again, it it definitely is going to depend on your criminal record, but I’ve definitely had, you know, clients and as a prosecutor, you know, agree to this. If it’s just a small amount of marijuana, even if you have a little bit of a criminal record at the preliminary hearing, we can potentially get you a summary disorderly conduct, which is a non-drug charge, minimal fine usually, depending on the judge. um and magistrate court costs which are much lower than cost of the court of column. Please everything you just said there was such a big deal and I hope you all heard that. I’m going to repeat it. Okay. If you get a summary disorderly conduct, you just took a misdemeanor level crime down to like a ticket. Okay, a a citation for disorderly conduct. So to kind of put this into perspective, if you go out and get a speeding ticket, that’s a summary level crime. That is a lot different than a misdemeanor level charge. Now, summary disorderly conduct is under the criminal code, not the vehicle code like a traffic ticket is, but it’s still a summary level offense and doesn’t really take a lot of issues in your life out of the running later. Like, it’s not going to have any major effects on you. And there’s a lot of really other like kind of indirect things that are better down there at the at the magisterial level. That would include way less court costs. the court cost. We’re talking literally the difference between thousands and a few hundred dollars in court cost. So, it’s a lot cheaper to resolve your case at the lower court. You’re also, of course, like I just said, avoiding that criminal record. Even though disorderly conduct is under the crimes code, it’s a summary level offense. And it’s, as you said, this is a big one. It’s not a drugreated offense. Yeah. Think about when you’re out there applying for a job, right? And they look at your criminal record and they see a criminal offense on there for drugs. Well, that’s probably going to take you out of the running if you’re in the heat with someone else for that job. Now, if you have a summary disorderly conduct that is totally non-escript and not related to drugs at all, because the way disorderly conduct is uh defined, it’s essentially causing a public inconvenience, annoyance, or alarm by an act that serves no legitimate legal purpose. That is totally a catch-all offense. If I go out into the road right now and start yelling and screaming, you know, or just cause a general disturbance in public, that’s what disorderly conduct is. Superior Court would would disagree with you. They say it’s not a catch-all offense. Well, they would, but but we know the reality. We’re talking brass tax here, like what we actually deal with dayto-day. We use disorderly conduct for a lot of criminal offenses, not even just small amount. But again, it protects you from that drug label. Um, so again, uh, really good outcome. But here’s the kicker. Unlike section 17, which gets you full expungement, you do still have that disorderly conduct citation, right? that is expungeable after five years from the date of conviction. So, it’s not an immediate expungement. Some people really just can’t have anything on their record, right? Like, I want to go into the CIA or the FBI. I can’t literally have anything that you’re doing section 17. That’s an easy analysis. Some people just they don’t really care about the disorderly conduct. It’s not going to affect them. Let’s go that route. Have you done any uh like rule 546s for those down at the DJs? Oh, interesting. Rule 546. I’ve never seen anyone agree to them. Yeah, not usually. Um because there’s other outcomes. It is. Yeah. Well, it’s a little different cuz that you could expune because the charges are being withdrawn. Yeah. But and the other thing is that the Tell us before we do it. What is 546? Rule 56. 546 is is dismissal upon agreement and satisfaction. It’s a rule in the rules of criminal procedure in Pennsylvania. Allows you to dismiss charges at the preliminary hearing. There is no conviction. There has to be an agreement about who’s going to pay the court costs. And nine times out of 10, that’s the defendant. And then um they would also have to pay restitution if there’s a victim for restitution and the there has to be an agreement or consent from the commonwealth. They have to basically believe that dismissing the charges is not a an issue that’s going to be uh it’s going to be an issue for the public. So rule 546 is dismissal of your charges by satisfaction and agreement of the party. Satisfaction meaning money you’re paying your court cost or any restitution, but the other party that if you have a victim that has to agree is the victim. Yeah. you know, uh, so it’s not just you in the Commonwealth always. It is sometimes a victim, but it is a really good outcome that you can get. I don’t really see it applied to drug charges a lot. Really not. Yeah. No, I haven’t I haven’t had that. I would say the other gray area about expungement is that while you could technically have the summary expuned, the misdemeanor will still remain on your record. It will just have no disposition data. So, you will potentially be able to expune that, but you have to wait a little while because there’s a there’s a a time limit for when a disposition has to be received in order for that to remain on your your criminal history. And if they withdraw it, then the criminal history database repository, whatever you want to call it, is not going to have any disposition data. So, at a certain point, you can have that removed from your record. But there is case law on the subject of like if if a charge is removed or withdrawn for a plea agreement that can’t be expuned because it’s part of the plea deal, right? Yeah. I mean, if you don’t have a conviction on your record for something, it gets literally withdrawn or dismissed. You technically are immediately eligible for expungement. What Tim’s saying though is there is like a processing period of time where it has to get downtown. It has to get put in the disposition is withdrawn before you could actually apply for the expungement. But it really isn’t that long. Like it’s it’s not that and it’s still a non-conviction. So like you don’t have to report it and even if they if it shows up on your wrap sheet or something, it’s going to show that you weren’t convicted of it. Yeah. And nonconviction data again is immediately expungeable. Unlike what we just mentioned with a small amount of marijuana getting down to a disorderly conduct summary, you got to wait 5 years to expune that from your record. But still, I mean, it a summary offense doesn’t really hamper you too much. You know, there’s trade-offs with everything. Everything we’re talking about has pros and cons. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. Um Justin, was that is that kind of like we we talked about three kind of dispositions there, right? Is that kind of the best ways to fix this? Is there anything else to unpack there? I think those are the the most I know Tim does uh some of the clean slate stuff. Uh and uh he knows way more about that than me, so I’ I’d defer to him on that, but I I would say the section 17 uh or a summer DC are probably your best bets. you know, section 17, like we talked about, automatic dismissal and expungement, summary DC, non-drug offense. Um, so those are definitely your best. I mean, like you said, people do burn an ARD on it. I wouldn’t suggest that if you can avoid it because there are other options available to you if you are uh essentially eligible for ARD. Use up one of the other options first. Um, and save that for, you know, something that may come up in the future. You may not need it, but it’d be nice to have it in your back pocket. Yeah. Right on. All right, Tim. Uh do you want to touch on clean slate a little bit? Yeah, just briefly. Okay. So they they did change so clean slate and limited access are two sides of the same coin. Clean slate is automatic sealing of a conviction essentially. And limited access is discretionary, meaning it’s up to the judge to allow it or to order that it be done. When a conviction is sealed, it is placed under seal and it limits the number of people who can see that conviction data. There are exceptions to this, but it’s not a full expungement, meaning it’s still on your record. It’s not wiped off your record, but not everybody can see it. So, when you go in for a background check for your employer that state police are required to extract this conviction data. Generally, there’s a time limit that you have to wait. Certain offenses don’t qualify. It’s seven years for misdemeanor, 10 years for felonies. Um, and there are exceptions as to who can see it. Generally, it’s like Department of Health, I believe, is one that can see it. If you work with kids or if your employer is being sued for a claim of negligence supervision, now it’s going to show up on background checks. It’ll show up for those reasons. Um, they changed this in 2023 to make it more expansive. So, now felony drug convictions also apply. You can get those sealed and you treat them as though they never happened. If they’re sealed, you can answer on a job application. You’ve never been convicted of a felony. You can treat it as though it didn’t it didn’t occur. Um they don’t segregate based on drugs. This is big. This is big. I want to highlight this. Felony drug charges are now eligible for sealing under this law. That’s huge. There’s so many people that are affected long-term in their lives by having a felony drug charge from years ago on their record. Maybe even for weed, right? maybe even a marijuana felony drug charge. Contact us. We can literally get that sealed for you so you don’t have to have that ball and chain on you for ever and get past that and move on with your life. That’s the whole purpose why the law went into effect now. There’s limitations like you can’t you have to be crime free for 10 years. They don’t distinguish based on drugs. So like if it was a felony if it was a felony meth conviction that that’s the same as a felony weed conviction as far as this goes. You can have both of those sealed. Now, the other caveat is what were you sentenced to? Because if you if your minimum if you were sentenced to prison time and your minimum sentence was greater than 30 months, you’re not able to have that that sealed. If your maximum sentence was over 5 years, you can’t have that sealed. So, while they don’t discriminate based on the kind of drug, the kind of drug you get caught with is going to affect your sentencing guidelines. And if you had a felony like fentinol and it was a large quantity and you got sentenced to 3 to six years in prison, you can’t have that sealed. Yeah. Great. Um Tim is our kind of in-house expert on expungement, sealing of records, clean slate. So if you have these issues in your past and you’ve been dragging them around on your back for your many years, call us. Uh we’ll probably hook you up with Tim and uh we we may very well, as he just explained, be able to fix that for you. uh get it sealed, get it expuned if you can, keep it out of the public eye. All right, I want to talk about another big topic with marijuana, and that is medical marijuana. Uh we are seeing so many cases, DUIs that involve medical marijuana. Uh possession of drugs that involve medical marijuana. Uh, there are some very strict rules about the use of medical marijuana that literally, and I know this because my clients tell me, they don’t tell you this stuff when you get your medical marijuana card. A lot of times with your medical marijuana card, what I’ve been told is the person shows up, they pay their 50, 100 bucks, uh they have a brief discussion with a doctor, and they are issued their medical marijuana card, but they aren’t told about all the caveats and the effects that it has on their life or potentially circumstances that they run into in the future. So, I want to talk about those because I want people to be informed who have medical cards, where they need to be careful, what’s important, and what they need to make sure they’re watching out for. So, uh, Justin, I’m going to kick it back to you. Uh, tell me a little bit about that and tell me about the limitations involved with that. Yeah, it’s so easy to get a medical marijuana card in Pennsylvania. You essentially just go online, like you said, pay a fee. uh within like 20 minutes they get you on a video call with a doctor who doesn’t turn their camera on uh most of the time. Um sounds like you know more about this than maybe you should. I don’t. No, I’m just kidding. I share. Um but no, it’s really easy to get it, but you know they like you said they don’t explain anything to you. Um I think you know what the uh legislature intended with that was, hey uh we’re going to do this, go research it, right? But nobody does that. Um but there are a number of things. The biggest thing is that, you know, people just think once you get a medical marijuana card, you can smoke all the marijuana you want, buy as much as you want, etc. Um, but there really are limitations on how you legally can ingest it, say legally. Um, and then, you know, how you have to transport it, how it has to be stored, uh, especially in a vehicle. Um, and then you know what they don’t tell you is you’re basically always going to be DUI. Yeah. So, first of all, if you have a medical marijuana card, do not store your medical marijuana in your car. Period. Don’t do it. You have a way reduced privacy right in your vehicle that you do not have reduced as much and significantly greater privacy right in your home. Don’t run around with it in your car essentially asking for the cops to wonder if you have it improperly stored or maybe you’ve been using it and now you’re going to get a DUI. These types of things. So the bottom line with this medical marijuana is don’t store it in your car. Understand how you have to store it. Okay? So here’s the rules. You have to keep it within the container within which you bought it at the dispensary in. Okay? And also how you’re using it, how you’re ingesting it. So many people get medical marijuana, flour marijuana, and they smoke it. You can’t do that under the law. The law does not permit you to smoke it. A lot of people do that, but you’re not supposed to. And this is where people get jammed up where they have a medical card and they’re coming into our office going, “Why have I been charged with possessing a small amount or some marijuana?” Well, the answer is either you didn’t store it correctly or you were ingesting it incorrectly. Nine times out of 10, that’s the answer, you know. Um, so how you store it, how you ingest it, the two biggest ones. And then as Justin said, this is a huge one. A medical marijuana card is not a license to drive around with marijuana in your system. I get so many medical marijuana DUIs right now. I can’t even tell you. Like literally multiple times a week, I get phone calls from people who get DUIs because they have marijuana in their system and they have a medical marijuana card. It is not a license to drive. And as Justin said, point blank, this is important. If you have a medical marijuana card and you’re regularly ingesting marijuana, because of how long it takes for marijuana to process through your system, to metabolize in your blood, and for you to excrete it and have it out of your system, if you’re using it regularly, you’re essentially a roving DUI all the time. That’s hard to hear. I hate even saying it because it’s like, how could that be? I could smoke today or I could vape today and maybe get a DUI two, three days down the road because I had it in my system. I’m not even impaired at that point. But the way the law is written, you’ve got to know that. So, be careful out there. Be smart about how you’re doing it, it’s absolutely legal to do it the right way. But understand the risk you’re taking with that DUI. And as we’ve touched on in previous episodes, if you haven’t watched the DUI episode, watch it. We talk about how DUI charges aggregate. The penalties are draconian. They’re mandatory jail sentences that you really need to be careful with with this medical marijuana because people stack them up quickly. So, uh, again, definitely not advocating to not use medical marijuana if you need to for your health reasons. Just know what you’re doing and go into it with eyes wide open. Was there anything else, Justin, you wanted to add about medical marijuana? No, I I mean really the biggest thing, you know, like we said, is if you’re using it, ingesting it on a regular basis, you’re you’re going to be DUI. And just because you don’t have the active um ingredient, meaning active THC, like you said, you know, the way the body metabolizes uh THC, it can take a long time to have it fully out of your system. And in Pennsylvania, it’s any amount of a controlled substance or a metabolite. And we have active metabolites, meaning uh the active THC breaks down into the active component, which still has psychoactive effects. Then there’s the inactive, which doesn’t doesn’t cause impairment. But if you have that in your system, you are DUI. Yeah, that’s a big one, too, man. Technically, I’m glad you brought that up. Technically, it is equally as illegal to have literally active marijuana in your system and to have an inactive metabolite of marijuana in your system for a DUI. Yeah. I mean, when you have that in your blood, equally as illegal, that’s crazy. Like, that’s nuts. But that’s what the law is right now, right? Yeah. And I I think because of where this has gone over the last couple of years, um I know in York, you know, when I first started as a prosecutor a few years ago, you know, I think even just having the inactive alone, people were really pushing that. I think now we’re starting to get away from that a little bit. It really depends on the situation. Like if there’s no bad driving and you know all you have is the inactive, you may be able to work that out. But if you were in an accident or something like that or had a minor in the car, you know, one of those aggravating factors, you may still have to eat that DUI. I know officers that if they suspect, like if they put you through fields and they don’t see any clues of impairment, like active impairment, they may know that you’re smoking, that you’ve smoked recently, and so they may know you’re going to have an inactive metabolite in your system, but they they may not hook you for DUI. Yeah, that’s a good point. A lot of officers will do that. And we’re talking about how it really works here, right? Like technically the law is that if it’s there, you can get a DUI for it. But I agree with you guys. And again, we’re all former prosecutors here, right? We’re now defense attorneys. We’ve literally been on the other side. We have seen the kind of the change in how this actually gets prosecuted. Even over the last few years, I would say maybe even less than that. Shifting for sure. It is definitely shifting. And again, we talked about it earlier, the way that people are viewing this in society. Right. The bottom line here is if you only have them inactive, you’re still legally on the hook, but they might not charge you. Yeah. Our bargaining posture is a little stronger. Yeah. It’s got better for defense attorneys. I think too that it’s worth saying just kind of as like a like just to have this out there in the back of your mind, as Justin alluded to. I mean, now for DUI investigations, they can distinguish between the active ingredient, the active metabolite, and the inactive metabolite on your blood results. And there’s pretty well established science on how long each of those stay in your system. It varies person to person and how much you smoke. But it is worth pointing out that we do have people that will try to say things like, “Well, I didn’t smoke today. I smoked yesterday or the day before.” But they’ve got active ingredient in their system and that breaks down way faster than I think what people realize. So just be mindful that it stays in your urine for 30 days, 60 days, maybe even 90 days, you know, on the extreme end, but in your blood, it dissipates a lot faster. It it metabolizes a lot faster out of your blood. Yeah. It’s still the lazy drug, though. Correct. When you talk about other drugs and alcohol, the rate of dissipation or metabolizing in your blood is still pretty much the slowest for marijuana. I think the the only reason I bring that up is because I have had some people that they they come in and they want to try to say, “Well, I’ve smoked within the last 30 days.” It’s like, “Yeah, but you have active ingredient in your blood and like so it’s smaller than that.” The science says you’re lying there. I mean, that’s it’s just that simple. Like if you [clears throat] have active marijuana in your system, the courts, the attorneys that regularly do this know that you’ve somewhat recently smoked marijuana. You’re not going to have it in your in active marijuana in your system if you smoked 30 days ago. it just isn’t going to be there. It’s like a couple hours, I think. Right. Like it’s not it’s not because it metabolizes into the active metabolite and then that just that gets out of your system a little more slowly. But yeah, absolutely. But yeah, no, I’ve definitely had people come to me and be like, well, you know, I smoked a couple of days ago. I’m like, well, here’s your blood results and that tells me that you’re lying to me, which isn’t helpful, first of all, but you know, it really does metabolize quickly into the active metabolite. The inactive kind of hangs out a little bit more. But again, the active and we can tell from the blood results, you know, what the the levels are. Um, and you’ll see people with very very low levels of active. So maybe they did smoke, you know, 6 8 10 hours ago, but then I’ve also seen ones where it’s it’s quite high. And basically they’re still on the come up when their blood is drawn. Right. Yeah. And again, I mean, we’ve said this before, like when you’re in meetings with us as attorneys, right? Tell us the truth. Like it’s confidential. It’s attorney client privilege. like you might as well tell us everything so we can unpack it and figure out how best we need to fix it. There’s no sense in hiding that from us. And just cuz you tell it to us, this is the whole attorney client privilege. We don’t go tell it to anyone else. We we talk about it with you and there’s very very limited circumstances. We could probably do an episode on this about attorney client privilege where it would have to get disclosed. That would be very rare though. And nothing about this discussion, right? And we and we want to have this conversation so that you can we can be real with you and we want to provide you with like is this a viable defense strategy or are we going to walk into like a U-shaped ambush and we’re going to go into court and try and argue this and the judge is just going to be like n screw you. Frankly, we wouldn’t do that because we know the science. Um but that’s where it’s like we have to have that tough discussion with the client like let’s just Yeah. Let’s just have a real discussion about this. Okay. All right guys. Um well I think we’ve uh probably beat to death marijuana. Okay. So, let’s let’s pivot here. Um, uh, Tim, uh, let’s talk about we talk about under the umbrella of drugs, prescriptions, legal prescriptions, and then, of course, illegal prescription drugs when you’re not getting it through a doctor’s prescription. Let’s talk about that a little bit. Walk me through kind of that under the umbrella of this old drug charges situation. So, I think most people understand the concept of schedules. Um, that I mean, that’s something that’s just kind of be aware of it. you know, the drugs when you’re caught with different kinds of drugs, your sentencing guidelines are going to be based on what the drug was, what the schedule of it was, and what the weights were. Um, so that’s affects what potential sentencing structure you might be looking at. Um, as it relates to prescription drugs, we’ve also alluded to DUIs in the past, so I’ll say it just kind of in passing. You can get a DUI for a schedule one any amount. Schedule two, schedule three if it’s non-prescribed. They they have to show that it’s an impairment if you’re prescribed that drug. So, if you’re taking a schedule one, two, or three drug that’s not prescribed to you, it’s pretty much automatically a DUI. But if you’re prescribed a schedule two, or three drug, then they would have to prove that you’re impaired. Um, um, there has been a recent shift in the law that I just want to touch on, but it actually doesn’t really affect us here in Pennsylvania yet. Yeah. And that is the change of the schedule of um medical marijuana federally, right? So, uh tell me about that. There has been a shift in the law here. So, my understanding is that the medical marijuana if a state has medical marijuana that that is treated as a schedule 3. Um there is a we’re I’ve heard as well that there is also potentially a chance that it gets that marijuana in general gets rescheduled later this month that could result in marijuana being a schedule 3 drug altogether. However, Pennsylvania under our law has a separate scheduling system and even to this day there is no distinction between medical or non-medical marijuana in our title 35 in the scheduling. And so once the federal court says it, assuming they do, once the federal system says that it’s schedule three, it is still schedule one in Pennsylvania and it’s still going to be treated as a controlled substance. It’s still going to be treated as a schedule one. Yeah. As I understand it, the federal schedule right now is that if you are if you have medical marijuana through the state, the federal system is viewing medical marijuana now as a schedule three substance instead of a schedule one substance. non-medical marijuana is still schedule one federally, but what Tim just said is there’s a different scheduling in Pennsylvania specifically, and right now medical marijuana is still considered a schedule one controlled substance. We were alluding to this even when we were prepping this episode that actually it’s any THC. So that includes delta 8. Say the long word. What’s THC stand for? Tetrahydrokinabonol. I I know you really want to say it. [laughter] You He told me I was not allowed to say it. I really wanted you to say it. At least you need to get tongue tied or something. I like I had to say it or I was going to explode. Yeah. Say it one more time. Tetrahydrokinabonol tetrahydroinabonoid. So any of those. So like there’s different versions of this. Marijuana like the plant is delta 9 THC but we know that in Pennsylvania delta 8 delta 8 gummies are pretty common. And now so those are technically schedule one as well. Um, Delta 4. There’s some other ones out there, too, that are synthetic blends or what or I don’t even know how they do it. There’s chemistry there. I’m not a chemist. So, science. Yeah. Talk to Bill Nye about it or something. Yeah. And, uh, later those are all schedule one. Yeah. Later in our episode, we’re going to talk about the gas station BS. Um, this is the like all the crap that you can find at a gas station or like a smoke shop that can get you in a hell of a lot of trouble. Yeah. Even now. Um, but it’s a gray area. Yeah, we’re not quite there yet, but uh we definitely have a a little note here for our gas station BS that we need to talk about. Yeah. All right. But to answer your question about the prescription, the general rules are don’t possess it if it doesn’t belong to you and keep it in the same packaging again. Um, if you’re if you’ve got like pills that are prescribed to you, but you’re keeping them in a ziplockc bag and and to be honest with you, I mean like that’s not necessarily the weirdest thing in the world. Like if you’re traveling but you leave your prescription at home, like a lot a lot of people might reasonably do that, but you have to be prepared. There could be consequences. An officer who has occasion to interact with you and see that may be sketched out, may think your explanation doesn’t make sense. You could catch charges over that. Generally, it’s as easy as proving that the prescription was indeed yours and then they’ll withdraw the charges, but you don’t want to be in that position. You don’t even want to get charged, right? So, the bottom line is here, be an organized person if you have prescription medications, especially if you have multiple prescription medications. I mean, we’ve all seen like those daily ones, right? Like your grandparents have the thing where they got a bunch of pills, so they break them up and they put them into the organizer, right? I mean, like if you’re you’re driving around in a car with one of those, right? I mean, an officer probably will understand like especially if you’re an older person, but if you’re like some young person, you’re just carrying around a weird box of pills. Yeah. What’s the officer supposed to think? Right. Yeah. [laughter] I mean, that’s gonna it’s gonna get you the uh the side eye right away. Yeah. So, again, don’t even have it in your car to begin with, please. But if you are, have it in the bottle like that’s labeled. I see a lot of cases um that come in where the person has the prescription, they’re legally prescribed the medicine, and they don’t have it in the labeled bottle. I I mean, I’ll tell you a story. I just had a case actually where I was representing a guy who got charged with possession of drugs and he had in the car a prescription bottle that had a label on it, but it was his sister’s name on the label. Now, his sister had a different last name than him. So, the police officer couldn’t figure this all out on scene. He gets charged with possession of a controlled substance cuz him and his sister happened to share a car and she left her prescription in there, but she’s not in the car at the time. Okay, bad circumstances. This guy gets charged with a crime. He’s got to come talk to me. We we go through the whole thing and ultimately, thankfully, we’ve sorted it out with the cops and we got the charge dismissed. But had he literally been a little bit more, you know, responsible or had his sister been a little bit more responsible in that circumstance, he never would have had to see me. He never would have been in that situation to begin with. Yeah. I mean, imagine too, you know, this is why we say be reasonable because that interaction with the officer may dictate what the officer does. You’re reasonable with that officer in that situation you described and your guy’s like, “Give me time. I can prove this isn’t mine. I I don’t have it.” Right? Maybe the officer doesn’t file that complaint for a month, gives you time to bring your sister into the station and show, “Hey, I have this prescription.” You know, it might be a good idea for you to to maybe ask plead that case on the side of the road with the officer respectfully. See if they’ll give you a chance to prove ownership of that drug. Yeah. And then talk to an attorney. We can help you with that. Right. Yeah. And don’t forget to follow up. If you literally do that and the police officer is giving you an opportunity to u save yourself, right? Don’t just like bury your head in the sand after and not follow up. This happens in other circumstances, too. Like sometimes they’re looking for a like they want to believe you. Sometimes they want to believe you, but they but their job requires that they can’t because you technically you’re in possession of drugs or of a prescription bottle. He doesn’t know that name is your sister. Yeah. He doesn’t know that, right? You can yell it all day. He doesn’t he’s have to go in and research it. He doesn’t have time to do that on the side of the road. So, follow up if you get an opportunity like that. This also comes up a lot in like traffic matters non-related to drugs where like you have tint on your windows and you get pulled over and they give you a like a warning but a notice that you’ve got to get it removed and if you can prove that you’ve removed it then they won’t ultimately end up ticking ticketing you. But so many people don’t follow up. Correct. They just don’t do it. Um registration. Go ahead and get your car registered. Let me know it’s registered in 5 days. Get your car inspected and we won’t cite you. Okay. Do it. Follow up. avoid the mess, you know, but you got to be kind of a responsible person to do that. Take it seriously. And please, if you have questions or you need help, call us. Yeah. We can help you navigate that. We do it all the time. Yeah. I mean, and and it’s the difference between having to even go into court, go into the system, waste your time, waste your money, or potentially even just heading it off at the pass. A lot of people, I think, just want to assume that all cops are just out for the citation. They’re out to charge you. They just want to do that. There’s some that probably are like that, but there’s some that like they’re trying to be reasonable with people. Yeah. Yeah. He that kind of think makes me think of a myth that I hear a lot. Um and I I I promise we are going to do an episode on myths and that’ll be a fun one because we’re going to talk about a lot of crazy stuff that might seem weird to people but in reality comes up with frequency and that is that you know the cops have quotas they have to meet. That’s not real. Like they don’t like I hear so many times like someone calls me on a speeding ticket. This cop only cited me because it was the end of the month and he had to meet his quota. That’s not real. At least in York and Pennsylvania. Like I’m not aware of any department that has a quota that they have to meet. And very little of that money actually even goes to the department. Very little if none. Yeah. I mean there’s some funds for like EMS and firefighters and stuff on there, but I don’t think much of that traffic ticket money is going to cops. Yeah. They’re not It’s not like the department’s getting richer cuz they cited you with a ticket. So again, off topic for today’s drug discussion, but keep that in mind. And like if you’re giving it, the cops aren’t out there to meet quotas. If they’re giving you an opportunity to fix your situation, call us, fix it on your own, but don’t stick your head in the sand. Be responsible and fix it. Especially with the drug stuff. I mean, you are going to have some hammers out there. Like they are they are looking to get into cars. They are looking to to get the get the big drug quantities out of cars and stuff. So, I mean, you’re going to have some I mean, that is their job and they’re they’re they’re going to be trying to sniff that stuff out, but you have other officers that I mean, if if they what you’re saying makes sense on its face, they’ll work with you. Yeah. And we actually uh Justin, I’m going to go to you now. We So, in York and I think a lot of uh counties across Pennsylvania, we have something called a drug task force. Yes, we do. A drug task force is police officers who are literally like they specialize in drug investigations. It’s like kind of all they do. Um, and a lot of these guys don’t even look like police officers, right? They like grow out their beards. They, you know, they aren’t they’re very rarely in uniform. Uh, only on like special occasions. But in any event, the drug task force kind of has a focus on like usually felony drug cases. Uh, and a lot of those start with little vehicle stops. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And I I want to use kind of that segue to pivot, [clears throat] excuse me, into PWID. Yep. a possession with intent to deliver or the caveat also or the umbrella of um manufacturing a controlled substance growing weed is a big one. Uh very rarely do we see people like pressing cocaine or like making uh heroin but it does happen too that way. Um uh or uh like I said manufacturing possessment intent or the actual act of delivery. Yeah. Right. Delivery these all fall under the same charge under the under the ve I’m sorry the criminal code. Meth labs I think were a different subsection and we had that for a long time in Pennsylvania. That was a big thing. What? Meth labs? You said manufacturing the meth. Oh yeah, you are right. Yeah. And if you get into meth and some of the really bigger manufacturings of major drugs, you’re probably getting charged federally, right? Then I was going to say that too cuz the most we see a lot of times for manufacturing is like the pressing of fentanyl into the counterfeit pills. So you could get caught with dyes for those the die presses. You could even get caught with precursors and still technically be charged, but like you said, I mean, if if you’re in that deep, the feds are coming after you. Yeah. And we we all do federal defense here. We’re all licensed by the federal bar here in Pennsylvania in the middle district um and regularly practice in front of the federal bench. But at the same time, if you’re in the federal world, you definitely need a lawyer. Like that system is a hammer. Um so if you’re involved in like big-time drug stuff, like be smart. Like get a lawyer. lawyer up and uh and be careful and protect yourself. So, all right, not too much on that. Uh Justin, let’s go again back to the state system here. Um tell me a little bit about PWID. Yeah, so I think I’ll start from kind of what we see the least of and go into what we see the most of. Um every now and again, especially with marijuana, you know, you’ll see it grow up every once in a while. I think when I was in the DA’s office, I had like two or three. One was very small. Um, actually my first round of defense before the DA’s office, I represented a guy uh out in Springberry Township uh who essentially got locked out of his house, called the locksmith, and they went in and found a whole grow operation in his basement. Oh, genius. Yeah. So, that was a fun one. Um, just break down the door, dude. I get that. But, uh, but anyway, you know, we we don’t see too much growing, I’d say, at least here in Pennsylvania. I’m sure it’s out there. Uh, other places. Yeah. uh manufacturing like Tim was saying, you know, pill presses, pressing fentanyl into fake pills. Um even that I don’t think is super common in the state system, at least down here in central PA. We’ve all probably seen it a few times. Um but I think a lot of people that are dealing fentanyl are getting the pills from someone else because, you know, that that’s risky, right? It’s dangerous. Um, and because of all the, you know, overdoses and deaths that we saw due to fentanyl over the last few years, I feel like it’s kind of subsided a little bit because, you know, people that sell drugs don’t want to kill people because that hurts their business. [laughter] Well, yeah, cuz their customer base goes down, unfortunately. Yeah. For Yeah. This whole thing with fentanyl and heroin, by the way, I like never see heroin anymore. Like straight heroin. We were talking about that just recently, too. Yeah. It’s It’s pretty much all fentanyl. Few and far between. There was a time, I’d say middle of last year, so middle of 2025, for whatever reason, um, I had two or three PWID cases come in and it was heroin, just straight heroin. And I was like, I haven’t seen that since like on the lab test, straight heroin. Yeah. And that was the first time probably since years ago, mid 2023, late 2023, cuz that’s when like the fentanyl, nor fentanyl, all that stuff kind of started bleeding in and we were seeing mixtures and then it was just straight fentanyl and then it was fentanyl and xylazine, which is, you know, something they cut it with. Yeah. So, uh, just straight heroin, at least here in central PA, is very uncommon at this point. Yeah. And I do want to pause here just to touch on opiates generally which would include of course fentanyl, heroin, uh a lot of different prescription medications. Like that is a very serious drug and it ruins lives. It ruins families. Like I feel like so bad for like the stories that I’ve heard in about families that have been ruined by this drug. Like if you know anybody that is struggling with an opiate addiction, please like get them help. Uh, I mean, reach out to us. We’ll talk to you about it. We’ll we’ll give you resources. Like, we’re happy to try to help people even if they’re not charged with a crime. Like, it literally can save a life, you know? Um, and I mean that with all sincerity. Like, I know people even close to me, friends that have struggled with opiate addictions and have sometimes come very close and uh in some cases actually passed away. And you’re dealing with young people here usually like lives just cut short. So, it’s a bitter. It’s a bitter pill to swallow. I mean, I bet you I I don’t know. I can’t speak for you guys, but like I know people I’ve had friends I’ve had, you know, very, you know, people that I’ve known of that have died of overdoses from this stuff. I have very close friends who struggled with addiction through this and are coming out of it. Yeah. And I also want to tell people if you’re listening to this podcast that are struggling with an addiction, if you are with another person who overdoses and you are worried about getting them help because you’re afraid that if you call an ambulance or the police to get that person help to literally save their life that you’re going to get in trouble. There is a protection in the law for you. You cannot be charged if you are essentially doing the good Samaritan thing to help that person and you are literally saving a life. Please know that the police know that they will not charge you if you are in that situation. Please call somebody if you’re in that situation. There are caveats to that. One of them is that you need to remain on scene. Yeah. You got to stay there. That’s true. And you got to try to render some aid if you can. Oh yeah. Or just summon aid. Yeah. I’ve seen it on both sides, too. I I represented a a girl um probably my first year doing defense, you know, back in 2020, whenever that was, 2021. Um who ultimately was charged, but we were able to get that worked out because she did everything she was supposed to do. She stayed on scene, you know, uh cooperated. And that was around the time, too, that the law was changing. So, I don’t think all the cops were as aware of it. I really am not seeing people who are summoning help for somebody who’s overdosing getting charged at this point. Honestly, as a DA, what I was seeing was that they were they were always airing on the side of not charging. And even to a point where there were crimes that we had to come back to them be like, you got to charge for this. Like you this does not qualify for. But on the on the flip side, if you do get charged, like you’re probably going to be able to get that worked out if you summoned help, if you stayed on scene. So please don’t shy away from that. You’re very likely not going to get charged. Okay? I don’t want to spend too much time on that. It’s a very sad topic, but it is something that the public, especially people who are struggling, they need to know this because this saves lives. It literally saves lives. Okay. So, um Justin, you talked a little bit about um uh manufacturing of the drugs, and I agree with you that we don’t see a lot of manufacturing charges. We definitely do see some. If we’re seeing them, it’s usually weed. Yeah. It’s usually marijuana. Because I mean, let’s uh I’m going to kind of focus. Let’s um let’s be clear here. There’s a lot of people I know him. I knew him growing up who grow weed. It might not be a big grow operation, but um and I think it has kind of gone by the wayside with the medical marijuana that now exists, but you know, you got teenagers who are doing growing a couple plants in their closet and they’re hoping their parents don’t find them, right? Because they just don’t want to go out and buy the drug on their own or they want to be cheap about it. But the bottom line is we do see the meta the grow operation sometimes with the weed and like the story you told Justin um with the guy who called him cops essentially on himself. He had like 90 some plants. Oh really? Yeah. He had a good amount. It wasn’t like just one or two plants. It was like a whole thing. Was he heavily using his product when he called the police? Was he No, he didn’t call the police. I I if I remember correctly, he called like a locksmith cuz he got locked out. Um and then that just led to a whole thing and a locksmith called the cops. And and by the way, I I think so. It’s like I said, it’s this was like one of my first cases. It actually was, like I said, it was here in York. Um and uh it it was just kind of unfortunate for him how it went down. Um but but if you’re getting locked out of your own house to a point where you literally can’t get back in. We’re talking like windows, the key under the doormat, like situ like there’s so many ways to get back into your own house that if you literally live there, you got to make sacrifice. I forget all the like little details about it. But what I do remember is that at some point the cops did come and essentially I think they walked in the house and they were like kind of smells like weed in here. Like can we look around? And he was like no. And then they went and got a warrant and went to his basement and he had everything down there. Yeah. Right. And that’s the other thing about weed. I mean we didn’t even mention this but most people know this. It’s a super pungent drug. Like you smell weed a mile away and everyone knows what it smells like. I was going to mention that right after you said for the medical stuff like don’t keep it in your car. Yeah. Cuz like you said smells like It smells. You don’t have to be a cop to smell weed. Um I mean, I walk around, you know, so many of these so many of these states that around us even have literally legalized marijuana where you can literally buy recreational marijuana. And I I you know, go on trips with my family, my kids, and we walk around and I’ll be walking around like up in uh Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where it’s legal recreationally. And my kids are like, “Dad, what’s that? What’s that smell? It smells dirty. Like what is that smell?” And I’m like, “Well,” and I tell them that’s marijuana. Cuz I want them to know what it smells like, you know? comedian named Dusty Sle who’s got a bit where he talks about like how um how it smells like a skunk and so but it doesn’t always well yeah so he when he was a kid he he wonders now all the times he smelled a skunk if his parents were just smoking and they told him it was a skunk and so the joke is now as an adult anytime he smells a skunk his reaction is man where’d that skunk get that weed at [laughter] this yeah all right well um yeah okay I didn’t want to kind of take away from you there Justin as you were kind of rolling But um we yeah talk about some of the other parts of PWID. Yeah. So I think the the main other types or the main types that we see uh especially here in York County and surrounding counties is going to be deliveries um or distributing um possession with intent to deliver, possession with intent to distribute PWID. Um and that happens in a number of ways. Um so with certain deliveries, you know, uh the uh drug task force especially, you know, they uh will use confidential informants. um they will use undercovers, you know, it’s it’s this actually is kind of like what you do see in movies, right? Like you see these things in movies like it it’s real life, too. It’s a lot different, but there’s also a lot of similarities. And uh you see it in movies because it’s interesting. It’s kind of like sexy in a way. Like it’s Yeah, people like to see that stuff. But like Justin said, that is kind of real life. Like they do undercover operations pretty regularly in this area. Like I I I mean we know these drug task force agents like and we talk to them regularly with with our clients cases and I mean they’re out there literally doing these operations every single day. Yeah. They’re solid. Yeah. And they’re and they’re very well-trained cops. It really is amazing too to talk to them because like I’ve been in meetings as a prosecutor where we’re going over intel and like they have names, they know associates, they know people like that they they like with the amount of information they pulled together to make that web. It’s crazy. Yeah. And a lot of these task force agents, I mean, because they’re essentially undercover, I mean, they’re not they’re not walking around police uniforms. They don’t look like cops. You would never know. And and some of these guys, you talk to them, I mean, they they brag that they’ve bought more drugs than some junkies out there. Yeah. Oh, and they probably have by far. Uh, you know. Okay. Well, CIS, let’s just touch on that a little bit. Um, and and again, I want to be a little careful here because this is kind of law enforcement does handle this, I think, in a way that is secretive, right? So, but again, they regularly are using um confidential informants CIS in their investigations into drugs partially because they have to and it’s a good way, it’s a good kind of bridge for law enforcement to get into the drug world because it’s a kind of a secretive world, right? Absolutely. Um so, we actually have clients a lot of times that either want to be confidential informants because they’re charged. Um and then we have plenty of people that I’m not snitching. They have that whole thing, you know. Um, either way, I mean, we can work with either way, but it is important to kind of know if you’re out there in society, like you you kind of need to know who you’re dealing with. Um, and a lot of people that operate in these in these drug worlds are a little loose about how they deal with their business. And um, again, not giving advice about how to deal drugs. That’s absolutely not what I’m doing. But just kind of understanding that, I mean, the cops out there on this, they’re good. Uh, they know what they’re doing and they’re in the environment. I mean, regularly. And to just kind of touch on that in in a bit of a different way, a lot of the drug cases, especially felony drug cases that we see, I think that, you know, may potentially not be as solid or be more defendable are usually going to come out of vehicle stops because there’s a lot more that goes into having a, you know, real tight solid um vehicle stop PWID case because there’s a lot of factors. You also have, you know, search warrants, etc. Do they have PC the stop? there’s a lot of things that can, you know, potentially be challenged versus when you have, uh, someone that gets charged with PWID for deliveries, um, or say, uh, you know, there were deliveries and then the, uh, police use the deliveries as probable cause to get into a house or a car. Um, an I’ve seen an RV, you know, I’ve seen a number of things, garage. Um, those cases are usually really solid. And going back to the confidential informant part with those cases where they just use the buys to get the PC, as soon as they get the PC and that warrant, anything the confidential informant did, totally irrelevant to what they find, right? Yeah. They um it’s it’s very rare that you buy drugs or sell drugs to a confidential informant and the police run in and bust you. That like kind of doesn’t happen anymore, which is weird because I I have seen that a lot in New York. I never You almost never saw that in Dolphin County. But I when I as a prosecutor here, I did have a few cases where they did buy bus. And they sometimes have to because there is by bus. That’s what it’s called. Yeah. Because they sometimes have to because there isn’t a segue like into the home. But where I was going with that is a lot of times they’ll it’s a by walk, you know, where they’ll they’ll do a buy with a CI. You’ll sell to a CI. Everybody walks away. No one’s any the wiser. You’re on camera, by the way. Um you know, you’re photographed and all that. And they might do that two, three times with you and then they track you where you’re going and you know ultimately they use that to then get into your home to get a search warrant or to get into your vehicle or to pull you over at a later time or you’ll catch charges 2 years later. Yeah. Exactly. Because they got you all on video and camera. Yeah. Um you know, but it’s still a buy walk, you know. So, you know, just be aware of that. I don’t I think it’s important people to know. It’s not like it just you could be subject to this at any time and you might have no idea and it could happen years later. everything just drops. You’re never going to have an idea. That’s how good these guys are. And that’s not you may have some idea of when it happened, like depending on how recognizable the facts are. But well, but that’s after you’re charged. Yeah. But if you’re, let’s be honest, like if you’re someone who’s regularly dealing drugs and you get charged a year after one or two deliveries, you you’re not even if you have the date in the location, you might not know like, oh, that was with Joe Smith. That’s what they’re banking on that you’re not going to remember all of it. I will say too, just as an aside, not to backtrack at all, but I have seen some PWI cases where it’s manufacturing and and so it’s worth pointing out that it doesn’t just have to be like pressing pills. Manufacturing can also be like bagging up the drugs. So like if you’re splitting like if you bought a large quantity of weed and you’re splitting that into lesser quantities, that’s technically felony drug. So you have to be careful about that. And then the other thing that I saw a lot in Dolphin County was crack was manufacturing of crack. We saw because that’s a relatively simple process. You can look that up on like YouTube. I think there’s a like a 3minute video on how to do that. And so like if they got cocaine and baking soda in a car, they might come after you for YouTube. Oh, sorry. I was going to say and not encouraging you to go on YouTube and try to become a expert crack manufacturer though. Walter White, right? Yeah. Yeah. [laughter] That is a real movie. that’s a movie or a show. Like I said, I just say that I’ve seen that that was also a thing. And and they’re looking for like in those kinds of cases, they’re looking for is this distribution paraphernalia or is this use paraphernalia? So chore chore boy is like a used paraphernalia, but if you got baking soda in the car, that looks like distribution material, right? I I had a case actually you just mentioned how the whole manufacturing thing and how they link you to that if you’re just like a bagger, right? Um, I had a case, it was a federal case, uh, a few years ago where a father was a kingpin in this enormous drug operation, uh, and it was it was opiates and things like that. I forget fentanyls. And, um, his son, who was 18 years old, was somebody that he used as one of the many baggers on location to just bag everything up. The son wasn’t even out there slinging it. He wasn’t even out there dealing it, but he got charged under the theory, and again, this is federal of um conspiracy, right, or accomplished liability, right? He’s taking an act to the furtherance of the distribution operation. And he was literally never been in trouble before, staring down the barrel of a life prison sentence in the federal system. Um needless to say, I mean, that case, we ended up actually getting a really good result, but it it wasn’t pleasant for my my guy. I represented the the kid who was 18 years old, charged federally as an adult, and he was staring on the barrel at 18 of a life prison sentence. And he ended up we actually worked it out in a way where we we actually got him out. Um, but it took a heck of a lot of heavy lifting and that you don’t want to be in that situation just being a little bagger and, you know, not even really engaging in it. But it happens all the time. That is the danger of this world too for people that are in it is that like you may just be and like I had a conversation with a guy recently where you know I kind of asked him point blank like I mean are you the guy or are you and and he was honest with me he told me like at one point yeah I mean I was kind of the guy now I’m just kind of a little fish. You don’t want to get hemmed up for being a little fish man. Like that’s that you could get really really jammed up for that cuz with conspiracy if you’re the little fish you can go down for the big fish. So, you literally are on the hook for the whole case ace, even if you’re just a little bagger. And they don’t care. Like, if you’re going to come in and give information on a littleer fish than you, they don’t care. That’s not going to help you, right? They want you to go up the chain. But if they can’t go up the chain, Yeah. you’re the head they’re hunting at that point, right? So, like, and and I say all that just because like you may not think it’s a sophisticated operation, but you get wrapped up in something that’s really big and like you said, you’re you’re looking at some really intense consequences. Yeah. Another thing I hear a lot guys who come in to see me for PWID cases and they know a confidential informant was used because it is called out in the uh in their charges that they used a CI. They just have no identifying information about the CI. They want to find out who the CI is if they don’t already know, you know, and they they sometimes ask me how do we figure that out? Um and there’s some real real strict rules about this. Um Justin, you want to tell us a little bit about that? Um and how that works? I mean the Commonwealth has a qualified privilege that this doesn’t get revealed but go into it a little bit for us here. Yeah, I mean there there really are very limited circumstances in which you know the identity would have to be revealed and that’s a judicial determination by the judge. Um so you know defense raises the issue uh commonwealth presents you know testimony and evidence and then we argue about it. Judge makes decision. Um, I think the main one that I always think of is if they’re using a confidential informant and say they go into a house and they come back out with drugs and they’re like, you know, who was in there? And they may say, well, whoever their target was and then there’s, you know, three other individuals, you know, that’s something they have to include. Um, because what if it was one of those other ones? So, that’s like, you know, an issue we would raise. um whether uh the CI would provide testimony that uh I believe is material to uh the defense uh also for defenses such as misidentification alibi and misidentification goes to multiple people in the house um or innocence uh whether the defense intends to call the CI as a witness uh whether the CI’s testimony would be relevant and helpful to the defense um and whether the case depends heavily on the CI’s account uh rather other than an independent witness. They all kind of That’s kind of the big one, right? Yeah. Like the only Let’s Let’s be frank about this. First of all, you’re probably not getting the idea of the CI cuz if it really came down to a situation where they had to disclose it on the other side legally, which again, as you just said, is very, very limited. If it really came down to that situation, the Commonwealth always has the power to just we’re just going to null pros the case. We’re going to dismiss the case. We’re going to withdraw it so we don’t burn our CI. Absolutely. And that that would probably happen unless they were willing to or didn’t need to like hide that identity, which never happens. Yeah, I’d say 99% of the time if they if the CI was going to be revealed and that was like the only option, those charge are probably getting withdrawn. Uh I get maybe if it was like a big case, but I think the big cases where they may actually want to burn them, maybe not want to burn them, but would burn them are probably going to be federal. Yeah. you know, like the stuff that we’re seeing where, you know, say it’s, you know, 50 to 100 g of cocaine, I mean, that sounds like a lot, and it is. Um, but to burn a really good CI over that, especially if you got them on other buys or, you know, whatever, like, it’s not worth it. If you if you’re have this chart, I get this question so much that I almost find it annoying. Um, but ask it if you have the question. we we’ll go over it and whether or not it’s a real option, but don’t get upset and expect that, you know, it’s absolutely you’re going to get the CI. You’re probably not. You’re probably not. Uh there is a qualified privilege in the law for the state not to reveal the CI. It just is the law. So, not not to bog it down with with stories, but I know I told you this in the prep. I had I had a guy that I met with and he was very much like you said, trying to reveal a CI. And the facts of that case, I I straight up told him, I was like, “Dude, there is no way you’re getting to the CI here because the CI is not even relevant anymore.” Like the CIA has been removed. The way the the drug task force guys did this, they did you so well here so hard that that CI is not even part of the equation anymore. Yeah. And they’re trained, the drug task force is trained to do their investigations and to attract and and get evidence in their case in a way that they literally do not have to burn the CI. All the CI did in that case was talk to the guy on the phone, set up a meet for the buy, and then hung up the phone. And that was all on speaker in the presence of a bunch of other officers. They heard it, and everything that happened after that, the CI wasn’t even involved. Yeah. It wasn’t even there. Yeah. All right. Um, I think uh that kind of is a is a good analysis and we could probably go into a few other things like wiretapping and things like that involved in these CI buys and PWID generally. But I want to move on into kind of the last topic we wanted to hit on and this was as I said earlier the gas station BS that that we deal we see so much now and know these smoke shops that just the garbage that’s out there. Um, a big one, the Delta 8s, uh, the things like that that I think people think cuz they’re selling it in a store that it must be legal, right? That’s like the license, right? Like, oh, oh, it’s legal cuz you’re selling a store. Well, let’s be frank. We told you in the prior DUI episode, you can get DUI, first of all, for being generally impaired on a substance of like some sort of drug. That does not require them to prove that it’s actually THC or it’s actually cocaine. They literally can say, “Yeah, all the factors here, all the circumstances show that this individual is impaired.” Um, so again, I mean, do do either one of you want to kind of touch on the gas station BS that we see and and what that probably could I know Tim knows a little bit more about the Delta 8 stuff. Maybe not. I mean, I as a we talked about it as prosecutors because we were in the same office together and and like I think for a long time there was a pretty strong preference for not going after the shops, but now that’s changing. I mean, I don’t know how much it’s changing to be honest with you, but we have seen shops getting hit now. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we’ve we’ve had cases at this law firm where we’ve represented a smoke shop. Like, that’s our client. Yeah. Because I mean, they could forfeit it. Yeah. Well, yeah. They could forfeit it. They can shut down the shop. They can they can literally and they can sometimes pierce it and come down to the actual owner and put that owner in jail. That’s happened in multiple counties around here where where smoke shops have been hit because some of them are becoming a problem because you go to the shop thinking you’re buying something and and like you said it’s over the counter. It must be legal, but the shops really are not selling you legal stuff. And so like you don’t want to be there when that shop gets raided obviously. I think I think the big one is that I always think of and this goes back to like I remember in high school I think is when it first started coming out is the like the K2 the synthetic marijuana and uh yeah spice and uh it’s funny when I was in uh Cumberland County uh prison yesterday uh doing a plea for a guy uh there was an inmate there who actually was charged with contraband for having K2 in the prison. It’s very common. So that stuff’s getting into you know the prisons and people being charged with it. Um, but I mean that stuff messes you up, you know, and and all of these like synthetic uh marijuana, there’s synthetic opioids. Uh, even, you know, the Delta 8 and theratom, like you have no idea. It’s it’s unregulated, so you have no idea what you’re actually buying. Um, and another thing with the smoke shops kind of off of PWID a little bit, but at the same time, like a lot of them that I’ve seen getting busted, uh, Dolphin County, Lancaster County, York County, they’re selling to minor. Can’t sell to minor. Now it’s 21. used to be 18, now it’s 21. So, you get, you know, an 18-year-old that goes in there and you sell it to them, all of a sudden, you know, that mean drawing some attention at that point. I mean, you really are. And and the other thing, too, is they I believe NMS, which is a lab company that is prominently used in this area in Pennsylvania for like blood results. Yeah. NMS uh stands for National Medical Services Laboratories. I’m glad you knew that. I didn’t know what the acronym Yeah, they do all the blood testing for DUIs through that lab. They can test for Delta 8, I believe, now. And they can also test forratom. So like you can catch DUIs for that. Even though is not technically a controlled substance, it is still a drug. It meets the definition of drug under DUI. So if they can prove you were impaired and they can prove that was in your system, you can catch a DU. And they get to use that as substantive evidence in court. Like it’s coming in against you. So don’t think just cuz you’re going to a gas station and getting something that’s on the shelf that you can literally pull off and pay for that you’re you’re free and clear. You’re totally not. And this kind of segus into I kind of want to close with this like the gas station stuff out there, guys. The the BS that’s out there. I mean, and there’s going to be more things coming out that we aren’t even aware of at this point in time, right? It’s literally every week there’s something new. Like, if you’re a young kid and you’re like, “Oh, this is easy. I’m going to get high. Have fun.” Dude, you’re you’re probably like potentially hurting yourself physically and you might even be really hurting your brain uh and your body. So, please stay away from that stuff. Like, it just is not worth it. And there’s so many other problems that can be caused by it that land you in our office for things that we have to then try to fix and explain and deal with. So, again, stay away from the garbage. Stay away from the scramble. Stay away from the rat poison out there that you can buy on the shelf at the gas station. Yeah. Go outside, kids. Yeah. Go outside. Stop playing video games. Damn it. All right. Um guys, thanks so much for watching uh the Now We Defend podcast. This has been a great episode. I think it was really, really all-encompassing. Um and again, as I said earlier, please subscri subscribe to us uh on YouTube. Hit the like button, leave reviews for us, leave comments. We will interact with you. We we’re very interactive in this podcast and we want to be interactive with you. We want to talk to you. So, if you have questions or you want to reach out, call us directly at the office uh here at Kernney Law or interact with us on all the socials. So, again, we’re on Instagram, Tik Tok, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube. Uh we can’t wait to talk to you and uh thanks again for listening to the Now We Defend podcast.
