SPRINGFIELD, IL (Chambana Today) – An Illinois Senate committee advanced a bill that would ban vehicle searches based on the smell of cannabis.

Senate Bill 42 was advanced on Tuesday and was voted 7-3. The bill would eliminate that cannabis be transported in vehicles in an odor proof container. It would also prohibit police from searching a vehicle based on cannabis smell if the occupants are at least 21 years old. The bill comes after the Illinois Supreme Court issued rulings in September that the smell of burnt cannabis did not give police probable cause to search a vehicle, but three months later ruled the smell of raw cannabis was probable cause for a search.

“This sets up a contradictory situation for law enforcement,” said bill sponsor Senator Rachel Ventura, D-Joliet.

The Illinois law requires cannabis be stored in a “sealed, odor-proof, child-resistant cannabis container” in a car and it must be “reasonably inaccessible while the vehicle is moving.”

“The odor of raw cannabis strongly suggests that the cannabis is not being possessed within the parameters of Illinois law,” Justice P. Scott Neville wrote. “And, unlike the odor of burnt cannabis, the odor of raw cannabis coming from a vehicle reliably points to when, where, and how the cannabis is possessed — namely, currently, in the vehicle, and not in an odor-proof container.”

“It makes no sense to treat raw cannabis as more probative when the odor of burnt cannabis may suggest recent use, whereas the odor of raw cannabis does not suggest consumption,” O’Brien wrote. “If the crime suggested by the odor of burnt cannabis is not sufficient for probable cause, then certainly the crime suggested by the odor of raw cannabis cannot be either.”

Law enforcement argues that the bill makes it more difficult to track drug traffickers and impaired drivers. The Illinois Sheriffs’ Association Executive Director Jim Kaitschuk provided an odorless container with raw cannabis to show that people can transport cannabis legally.

“Through our training and experience, we can make this distinction” between burnt and raw cannabis, Kaitschuk said.