You smoke weed in front of the cops, get free munchies, and a ride home. Not a dream, no. It’s the new Ocean City Police Department (OCPD) program, as part of the Maryland Highway Safety Office’s Zero Deaths DUI Conference, held in partnership with Cannabis Green Lab. And it’s happening on Sunday, October 26, from noon to 4 p.m.
In Ocean City, Maryland, the police department put out a call for volunteers to light up and drive for training purposes, and quickly received an “overwhelming” number of volunteers, according to the OCPD post. All in the name of science, education and, probably, free lunch (they did have to bring their own stash, but still, not a bad deal.)
The OCPD was only looking for 12 to 14 adults over 21 years old to “smoke cannabis for educational purposes while officers learn to recognize cannabis impairment,” but the post went viral within hours, forcing them to close the call, according to Marijuana Moment.
And because it sounded so good, the 12–14 spots turned into a flood of applications, hundreds of people reportedly signing up within seven hours.
Training cops to read the high, not just smell it
The initiative is part of the Maryland’s Zero Deaths DUI Conference, in partnership with Cannabis Green Lab. The Green Lab, says OCPD, “helps both officers and participants better understand the effects and levels of impairment caused by cannabis, all in a safe, controlled setting.”
Participants have to bring their own weed, consume it before the driving exercises, and then get a free lunch, “courtesy of MHSO,” clarified the department. To keep things above board, a shuttle service was arranged to take volunteers home once the session and the meal were over, since no, you can’t drive high, not even in states where smoking is legal.
“We’ll have about 40 student officers participating, so it’s a great way to help train the next generation of law enforcement safely and responsibly,” the department said.
This training comes after a crucial legal shift in Maryland. Following adult-use legalization, Governor Wes Moore (D) allowed a bill to become law prohibiting police from using the smell or simple possession of cannabis as grounds for a search. And earlier this year, Montgomery County also began relaxing cannabis policies for would-be officers to boost recruitment; another sign that, even inside the force, times are changing.
That means law enforcement can no longer rely on the ‘odor test’—a sniff and a hunch, basically—to justify arrests or searches. The Green Lab training program seeks to update that outdated logic with actual observation and data, bridging the gap between legalization and enforcement.
It’s rare to see the words ‘police’, ‘weed’, and ‘free lunch’ in the same sentence, and rarer still for it to be entirely legal. But that’s Maryland’s new reality: a state trying to redefine what responsible cannabis use—and enforcement—looks like. And as Governor Moore himself once admitted, even his historic win couldn’t top the people’s will: “There was one thing that beat me on the ballot: marijuana legalization.”
