By Howard Fischer | Capitol Media Services via Arizona Capitol Times
State lawmakers have no legal right to make it a crime for medical marijuana users to possess the drug on college campuses, an attorney for a student who was arrested is arguing to the Arizona Supreme Court.
In new legal filings, attorney Thomas Dean is urging the justices to void the conviction of Andre Maestas. He was arrested by Arizona State University campus police in 2014 when they found 0.4 of a gram of the drug in his dorm room.
Dean said the presence of the drug is not in question. In fact, it was Maestas himself who told the officers about the marijuana.
But the attorney said the 2010 initiative which legalized the possession of marijuana for medical use had only a limited number of places where people could not use the drugs. That includes public schools and prisons.
That law does not, however, include university campuses. Yet lawmakers voted anyway in 2012 to extend the scope of the law.
