Taylor Deshotel (Des-hotel), a San Antonio resident, informed Texas Cannabis Collective that he was arrested in the city of Seguin on felony drug possession charges for possessing legal CBD oil.
Taylor was pulled over at approximately 2 a.m. on July 23rd for a malfunctioning license plate light on his vehicle. The stop was going smooth until it took a detour with the officer asking if there was anything he should know about, because the officer claimed that the car smelled like cannabis.
“The officer actually came off pretty nice, he wasn’t a mean officer at all. Everything was good until he smelled the odor of my car and said it smelled like weed and asked if there was anything he should be concerned about,” Deshotel told us.
Deshotel informed the officer about the CBD vape that he had on him, under the belief that because it was legal he would not face any consequences for it stating, “I’m not about to hand over a felony drug charge if I honestly think that what I have is not legal to have.”
The officer then proceeded to ask Deshotel to exit the from the vehicle and that he would conduct a search. The search turned up a empty box in another part of his car that the officer claims to have suspected was for an illegal product. Deshotel informed the officer that the box had nothing to do with the CBD cartridge and the officer allowed him to go back to his vehicle. At this point the officer told Deshotel, “don’t worry Taylor, everything is going to be okay, it’s just a setback.”After a roadside test came back positive for THC, the officer proceeded to arrest Deshotel and take him to jail for processing where his bail was set at $5,000 dollars and his car was impounded. He is already out $750 now to post deposit for the bail bondsman and retrieve his car from the impound. After spending a weekday in jail while waiting to make bail, Deshotel claims he lost his job and now he has had to resort to things like donating plasma on top of working a much lower waged job to keep afloat for the time being. All of this while Deshotel will try to obtain an attorney that can truly focus on his case and keep him in the clear.
The packaging the CBD came in makes the claim that there is no THC contained in the product. Deshotel said when he called the oil company, he found out that wasn’t exactly the case.
“I found out that the product had something like, 0.005%, which isn’t anything more than a crumb of THC for the size of this oil package,” Deshotel said.
Deshotel is victim to the type of methods that Governor Greg Abbott informed law enforcment agencies to use in detaining anybody police deem to be in possession of an illegal substance. Abbott told agents that they should continue to use what is known as circumstantial evidence. Officers in this case used the odor, the cartridge, and the alleged box to build just enough case of circumstantial evidence to warrant an arrest, despite the district attorney has admitted they cannot even prove that what Deshotel had on his person at the time is even illegal.
All of this also is compounded by the fact that the officer was very friendly and made the appearance that he was looking out for Deshotel’s best interest. He was not intimidating, he was not mean, he did not try to use tricky language. The officer was polite and courteous the entire time, despite the intention later seemingly became to gather enough evidence to warrant an arrest at the moment.
The Guadalupe County Attorney’s Office told KSAT news that “it legally has up to three years to formally indict these types of cases, but it will give DPS until around Christmastime to offer the necessary testing so that people like Deshotel aren’t left in limbo.”
Deshotel wants to get this cleared because he cannot wait for the DA to figure out what is to be done, so that he can go back to his normal employment which is willing to take him back once the charges are dismissed.