{"id":223745,"date":"2026-09-13T01:46:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-13T08:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/portal.bluetogold.com\/can-cops-demand-id-passengers-smell-marijuana-car\/"},"modified":"2026-09-20T01:24:24","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T08:24:24","slug":"can-cops-demand-id-passengers-smell-marijuana-car","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/portal.bluetogold.com\/?p=223745","title":{"rendered":"Can Cops Demand ID From Passengers If They Smell Marijuana in the Car?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anthony Bandiero<\/a><\/strong>
\nAttorney and Senior Legal Instructor, Blue to Gold Law Enforcement Training<\/p>\n

This one is from the Roadside Chat series, recorded in June 2022. The question comes from an officer in Iowa. It has to do with whether officers can demand ID from passengers when they smell the odor of marijuana coming from the vehicle.<\/em><\/p>\n

Editor’s note:<\/strong> This episode was recorded in June 2022. Marijuana law has changed in a number of states since then, and in some of them the odor of marijuana alone no longer carries the weight it did when this was recorded. The constitutional framework Anthony walks through here has not changed. The state law underneath it may have. Check your own statutes and your own appellate courts before you act on this.<\/p>\n

Can cops demand ID from all occupants when they smell marijuana in the vehicle?<\/h2>\n

Here’s the background. Officer pulls over a vehicle, a total of five occupants, and smells the odor of marijuana emanating from the vehicle. Obviously the driver is required to provide identity, right, a license and so forth. All other occupants refuse to identify themselves. This all happens prior to the probable cause<\/a> search. The vehicle is searched and yields no contraband.<\/p>\n

Aside from other violations of Iowa code, is the odor of marijuana emanating from the vehicle enough to demand identification from all occupants prior to searching the vehicle? To the point: if they refuse to identify themselves, are they interfering with a lawful investigation? Or in this given situation do we just need to wait until the contraband is located to demand identification from a person who the contraband is likely to have belonged to, like under their seats, in their bag and so forth.<\/p>\n

Do you need a stop and identify statute in your state?<\/h2>\n

First of all, I want to make sure you guys know that I’m not a statutory expert in your state, right. I was a cop in Nevada. I certainly know Nevada law, and I can tell you that in Nevada law we can demand ID in these circumstances. But you need to know the law, the statutes, the statutes in your state.<\/p>\n

In other words, if you are going to go down the route of citing, arresting, you need to point to something that you can enforce. I can’t do that for you. What I can do, though, is talk about the constitutional aspect, and that’s what I’m going to do right now.<\/p>\n

Generally speaking, it would be permissible constitutionally to demand ID from the other occupants under this circumstance. The best case we have on point from the United States Supreme Court is the Hiibel case, H-I-I-B-E-L, out of Nevada. This is a case where cops in Nevada demanded identification from a domestic violence suspect. He refused to identify and he was arrested. The Supreme Court upheld that arrest.<\/p>\n

But one thing you’ve got to know is they upheld the arrest partially not just because it met constitutional muster, but also because Nevada has a stop and identify statute. Which is another way of saying the stop under reasonable suspicion has to be lawful. If it’s a stop on reasonable suspicion, then the cops are allowed to demand ID from that person. So that’s what’s going on there.<\/p>\n

Does the smell of marijuana give you reasonable suspicion on the passengers?<\/h2>\n

So with those foundations in place, let’s go through this scenario.<\/p>\n

Number one, does the officer have reasonable suspicion? Is there a moderate chance, as the Supreme Court would say, that these other occupants are involved in the criminal activity? The answer is absolutely yes. The odor of raw marijuana or burnt, burning marijuana emanating from a vehicle implicates all occupants. So there’s a nexus between the suspected criminal activity and these occupants.<\/p>\n

So there’s the first thing. Do we have reasonable suspicion? The answer is yes.<\/p>\n

And they’re also in a confined space. It’s not like the officer walks into a nightclub and smells marijuana and starts telling all hundred patrons, hey, start producing some ID. That’s not what’s going on here. This is a confined space. This is a vehicle. So is there a moderate chance that one of these occupants or all of them are involved in some kind of criminal enterprise? The answer is absolutely yes.<\/p>\n

Can you search the passengers under the motor vehicle exception?<\/h2>\n

Okay, then we do a probable cause search and find no contraband. All right, now what should we do, right? Well, let’s cross the next bridge.<\/p>\n

I know what you’re thinking. Cops are like, well, Anthony, let’s search them, right. Let’s search them, let’s search their pockets, let’s see who has the marijuana.<\/p>\n

Before you start searching people, I want you to know something. People, occupants, whether it’s the driver or the passengers, are not covered under the motor vehicle exception<\/a>. I repeat: if you have probable cause for a motor vehicle, it does not give you automatic authority to search the occupants. Instead, you are going to need what’s called a nexus, a connection between the contraband in the vehicle and them.<\/p>\n

Now drivers are usually very easy to get that nexus. There’s a presumption of knowledge. Obviously they’re in control of the vehicle. So I do not see a lot of cases that are pushing back on cops searching the driver for the contraband.<\/p>\n

It’s going to be these passengers, right. It’s going to be these passengers saying, hey, so what if one of my friends is a weed smoker? Does that mean I lose my liberties just because I hopped into the car with them? And you may sometimes say, yeah, I guess you do. No, you don’t. It’s not illegal in any state that I can think of to be friends with a pot smoker, right. It’s illegal to have contraband on you, and possession and so forth.<\/p>\n

So if you’re going to go into a passenger’s pockets, you’re going to reach in there and you’re going to search this person, you can call it a pat down, but if you’re really looking for evidence, that’s not a pat down. You’re not looking for armed and dangerous, you’re looking for evidence. You need to articulate why do you believe that this particular person may have the contraband.<\/p>\n

What connects a passenger to the drugs found in the car?<\/h2>\n

I go in my simple brain, I look at five things.<\/p>\n

I look at nervousness. Not just mere nervousness, abnormal nervousness.<\/p>\n

I look at things of evasive behavior. The person, this passenger, begging for you to be released from the stop because they want to walk. Now this is kind of weird. Most people want to stick with the ride, right, unless they’re right there at work. They run from the traffic stop.<\/p>\n

They’re deceptive. They’re lying to you about who they are and what they’re up to and so forth. Those are signs of criminal activity, guilty mind stuff.<\/p>\n

Their reactions. Their answers to questions and so forth, their reactions are inconsistent with innocence.<\/p>\n

And then specifics about them or the environment, right. Do they admit that they have prior drug charges? They just left a known drug house.<\/p>\n

These are all things that I want cops to look at to see if they can actually connect this nexus. There are many more things out there, not just that, that can be used to make that connection, but these are some things.<\/p>\n

Does getting a passenger’s ID actually help your investigation?<\/h2>\n

So back to this ID issue. Can knowing who they are, and also running their history and so forth, and whether or not they’re on parole or probation for drugs, can that actually help you isolate who is the culprit here? And the answer is yes.<\/p>\n

So in this situation, if cops are going to really demand ID and potentially make an arrest or citation, and you know how you’re probably making arrests, they’re not going to identify themselves. If you’re going to put your name on an arrest, have a good reason for doing it. If you go to court, a judge is like, okay, you made the arrest for no ID, and you have reasonable suspicion, and we have a statute that calls it obstruction. But in this case, would that ID have provided any help to you to solve this investigation?<\/p>\n

And if you say no, you’re making bad case law, in my opinion. So have a reason, and those are the reasons.<\/p>\n

Should you arrest five people for refusing to identify themselves?<\/h2>\n

Going back to making good case law. I personally, with these facts, I’m not going to start hooking up five people and dragging them to jail, right, if I don’t have a nexus. If I cannot point to them as particularly involved in this, and they’re giving me a hard time and they’re saying I’m not identifying myself, and I’m just gonna bring them all to jail just to show that I have the authority, well, you do you, I’m gonna do me, right. I’m gonna make good case law. This is a marijuana case.<\/p>\n

So if I don’t have the nexus, I’m not arresting anybody. If I have the nexus, I go from there and I make good decisions, right. I make good case law for myself and my department and for you.<\/p>\n

I hope this helps. It’s a good conversation. There’s a lot of gray area in here. Change the facts, change the answer. You know what I mean by that: facts matter in these cases. It’s only this much, only got this much, to make a decision that has this many implications. So remember that.<\/p>\n

Until next time, my friend. Stay safe, and thank you for watching the channel.<\/p>\n

The short version<\/h2>\n