Medical marijuana patient from Rhode Island arrested for possession in York County

On New Year’s Eve, Dino Baccari was driving from Baltimore-Washington International Airport to pick up his children at his mother-in-law’s home when he got pulled over on Interstate 83 in York County for driving 72 mph in a 55 mph zone.

A Pennsylvania State Police trooper said he could smell “the odor of raw marijuana” coming from the car and asked him if there was anything that shouldn’t be in the vehicle.

He said he had a small amount of marijuana. So Baccari then reached into the glove compartment and handed the trooper a zip-close bag.

Baccari, 40, of Providence, Rhode Island, is a medical marijuana patient — he said it helps him with his chronic back pain and severe tinnitus, or ringing in the ears — back home. It didn’t matter. Police arrested him on charges including possession of a small amount of marijuana.

“I’m being penalized for using a drug that helps me a lot with my daily life,” Baccari said. “It’s out of control.”

When Gov. Tom Wolf prepared to sign legislation establishing the state’s medical marijuana program, he said he was excited to “provide long overdue medical relief to patients and families who could benefit from this treatment.”

But Baccari’s case highlights a problem with these laws in the United States: Just because someone is a patient in one state doesn’t mean he or she is protected from arrest and criminal prosecution in another one.

“Here’s the thing,” said William Roark, who’s a principal and chair of the medical marijuana practice at Hamburg, Rubin, Mullin, Maxwell & Lupin in Montgomery County. “Whether or not what he did should be illegal is another topic. But what that person did clearly is in violation of any number of laws.”

Roark also serves as co-chair of the Pennsylvania Bar Association’s Medical Marijuana and Hemp Law Committee. He said there’s no reciprocity in the law. Someone must be a card-carrying medical marijuana patient in Pennsylvania and obtain the medicine through a permitted dispensary.

Baccari, he said, was “doubly-wrong” crossing state lines. Marijuana is still classified as a Schedule I controlled substance, which means the federal government considers it as having a high potential for abuse and not a currently accepted medical use.

In Pennsylvania,