According to three recent North Carolina Supreme Court decisions (State v. Dobson, 929 S.E.2d 315; State v. Rowdy, 929 S.E.2d 324; and State v. Schine, Citation: No. 305PA24 Filed 14 August 2026), the answer appears to be, “yes.” Since hemp was legalized in the state in 2019, legal challenges involving searches based on what police believe to be the smell of marijuana have been stacking up. Hemp and marijuana smell and look identical to one another. No canine or human nose can tell the difference between the two. The Court clarified in these cases that marijuana odor remains a valid factor under the totality of circumstances, even though hemp is legal in the state. So, searches of automobiles and persons inside them based on an odor of marijuana will likely continue to be upheld based on these cases. In the DUI context, to bring relief from an unlawful arrest based on odor alone, practitioners will need to focus attention on factors beyond the odor that support a lack of probable cause for the arrest. The odor may support an investigation or a search, but impairment still has to be shown to justify an arrest.