What you should know about having cannabis in your vehicle in BC

Most people are careful about having booze in their car while they’re driving, but B.C. has cannabis transportation laws that are just as strict.

Kyla Lee is a Vancouver lawyer with some expertise in cannabis law.

“There’s a lot of regulations around cannabis that people aren’t aware of,” Lee told iNFOnews.ca.

To transport cannabis products in a vehicle they have to be in the original, sealed Health Canada package if it’s somewhere the driver or passengers can access it. If it’s somewhere that no one can reach, like the trunk, there’s no specific type of packaging required.

The weed also needs to be under the legal amount for possession which is 30 grams, and legally obtained. Cannabis can’t be within reach of anyone under 16.

“If it’s not accessible to drivers or passengers, then it can be your own homegrown stuff. But the problem is most people will pop it in their glove box. They’ll pop it in the passenger seat or they’ll pop it in the console,” Lee said.

For growers who are transporting plants, they have to be non-budding or non-flowering while in transport.

Getting caught transporting cannabis illegally can get British Columbians a fine ranging from $230 to $575, and even jail time.

The defence lawyer said if an officer smells weed they are allowed to search the rest of the vehicle.

“The police have pretty broad authority to search vehicles for compliance with the Motor Vehicle Act and the Cannabis Act,” she said. “Police will smell it and then they still have the authority to search the vehicle.”

Lee deals with the occasional case where someone is fighting a ticket for improperly transporting cannabis. She said the tickets are handed out pretty frequently, but most people don’t fight them.

“People should be disputing the tickets. I think they dispute them less than they should, but it is important to dispute them because the record of anything cannabis related can have implications not just in B.C., but it also ends up creating a record that can be accessed at the border and can give you problems,” she said.

Cannabis transportation laws are pretty similar to laws around transporting alcohol in your vehicle, but Lee said police are more likely to penalize people for a plastic bag of weed in the glovebox over an opened bottle of wine in the backseat.

“We’ve had hundreds of years of de-stigmatizing for open alcohol use and it being socially acceptable. Whereas with cannabis, it’s not as de-stigmatized yet. So the police will take it more seriously. They also still associate cannabis with drug culture and with illegal activity, whereas alcohol is just a good time,” she said.

The safest bet with weed, just like with alcohol, is to put it in the trunk of your vehicle.