Earlier tonight I was driving home from my girlfriend house, I had taken dab hits about 6 hours before and smoked a joint like 2 hours before driving. I got pulled over because of my license plate being missing on the front, for context this is in texas, anyways the cop came up to me and told me he pulled me over for the missing license plate and then asked for license and insurance, once I gave him that he asked me to step out the vehicle and place my hands on the hood of my car for search because he can smell marijuana in my vehicle. I comply because I had recently smoked and didn’t wanna make it worse, so he asks me if I have anything illegal on my body before he pays me and I say no. So then he pats me and proceeds to open up my car and that’s when I speak up and ask what’s going on, he says he’s gonna search my car and I tell him I don’t feel comfortable with that. He says that he has reasonable cause to search my vehicle because of the smell in my vehicle and I just say oh okay or something dumb not trynna freak out. He then asks if I have anything illegal in the vehicle and I explain that I do have weed in my bag, I thought it be best to be honest since that bag totally smells dank once you open it so I didn’t wanna take chances with that. So he gets the weed out the bag and finishes his search and then confiscates it. He eventually comes back and since it is my first time offense for illegal possession of marijuana, I don’t get arrested but instead have to complete community service to not have the misdemeanor on my record.

Anyways that’s all the context, looking back at it, it just feels wrong, and I wanted to know if you guys think that the fact that he searched my vehicle because of the smell of marijuana is okay? He obviously didn’t think I was under the influence if he didn’t do a sobriety test, I also think it was sketchy that there was little conversation going on. I was too focused on not looking/acting stoned than worrying about the fact that I had some weed in my bag. It’s also not really a huge deal to me, I was planning on quitting soon anyways but it is embarrassing. But yeah it just felt like I got taken of advantage of looking back at it, like the officer didn’t do a great job stating what was going on or staying within his own legal bounds as well.

Also, I know I was in the wrong because weed is illegal in Texas, but I do live in the neighboring state of New Mexico where it is legal to use recreationally, I was only passing through Texas because of my girlfriend, which is only like 30 minutes anyways so the basis of the legality is weird since it’s legal where I live but a 2 minute drive down the road is strict ass Texas where it’s way too illegal.