Montgomery County Chief of Police Marcus Jones stated that now that recreational marijuana usage is legal in Maryland, concerns about people smoking marijuana in public settings such as apartment complexes or condos are “not a police matter.”
Officials from the police department and the office of State’s Attorney John McCarthy are talking about how Montgomery County will deal with “the issue surrounding cannabis, the legalization of it, as well as what will we be doing in response to calls for service surrounding it,” Jones said.
Recreational marijuana became legal in Maryland on July 1. It’s also legal in D.C. and Virginia.
Jones said that even though it is now legal for people to buy marijuana, they can’t sell it.
“They can gift it, but not sell it,” Jones said.
He said that police haven’t focused on “strong enforcement efforts around that,” but it may become an issue that police have to deal with in the future.
Jones said that the department would no longer respond to calls about people smoking marijuana in apartments or houses, even though it used to do so in the past.
Jones suggests that people who live in these places and might be affected by smoking talk to the resident manager “to try to figure out what is the policy of the lease agreements, and what is the policy of that lease management company moving forward.”
Jones said, “We just want to make sure the community knows that’s not a police matter,”
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