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Committee hears bill to stop treating bong water as drug "mixture" weight that increases penalties
Summary
Senate File 1905 would repeal an outdated provision that counts water in smoking devices toward the weight of a drug mixture for sentencing. The ACLU and supporters argued the current rule can yield extreme penalties for residual residue; lawmakers laid the bill over.
Senate File 19 05 would repeal statutory language that counts water in devices such as bongs toward the weight of a "drug mixture" used to determine felony sentencing thresholds.
Sen. Uma Verbaten (bill sponsor) and witnesses told the committee the provision has produced disproportionate results. Alicia Gransey, staff attorney with the ACLU of Minnesota, said cases remain in which people have been charged with first-degree drug possession because a bong with several ounces of water exceeded a threshold when authorities counted the water toward the mixture weight. She described a pending case where a woman faces first-degree possession penalties — including a possible 30-year maximum sentence — after a water pipe containing eight ounces of water with trace residue was treated as wholesale methamphetamine weight.
Gransey said the law is arbitrary because a one-ounce difference of pipe fluid can determine whether a defendant faces decades in prison. She said pipe water is not a practical method to transport or store drugs and argued the statute was not intended to target end-users with residue in paraphernalia. "People don't ingest bong water to get high," Gransey said.
Committee members asked whether law-enforcement labs can separate fluid from residue; witnesses said it is technically possible to analyze remaining solids after evaporation but that the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension lacked a routine procedure to do that in such cases and that prosecutions have continued under the current statutory interpretation.
The committee heard the testimony and laid Senate File 19 05 over for further consideration.
