Trends in Prince William County Drug Cases

If you are facing drug charges in Prince William County here is what you need to know about unique aspects of local drug cases and emerging drug trends. To learn more about drug cases in Virginia or discuss your case, consult with a Prince William County drug lawyer today.

Unique Aspects of Drug Cases in Prince William County

The unique part of the process of a drug case in Prince William County are the personalities that are involved. A big part of that are the law enforcement agencies which are tasked with enforcing and investigating these offenses and in the case of Prince William, the Prince William County Police and the state police and their subdivisions. Different groups and different officers target particular kinds of drug offenses and particular kinds of drugs.

The other unique piece is the various prosecutors and judges and how they treat these in Prince William County. This can vary significantly from prosecutor to prosecutor and from judge to judge because Prince William County is a large jurisdiction which is constantly growing. There are numerous prosecutors and judges, and it’s important to know who’s who, which things they are inclined to be lenient on, which things they treat harshly, which defenses they are more susceptible to, and what arguments they like and which ones they don’t.

Local Trends in Drug Cases and Enforcement

There’s definitely a trend in how Prince William County treats drug related cases. It starts on the enforcement end where there is an ever increasing law enforcement focus on drug cases and where more resources are being poured into the number of police, their training and sophistication on drug cases, the number of drug dogs, the number of forensics labs, and, just in general, the sophistication of the law enforcement officers themselves and the things that they have at their disposal to assist them in enforcing and detecting drug-related offenses.

There is also increasingly little tolerance or sympathy in the court system both among prosecutors and judges for drug-related offenses. This is related to prosecutors and judges having such extensive experience with drug cases and the fact that they see the fallout of drug addiction particularly in young people. And so, there seems to always be a trend towards tougher enforcement, stiffer penalties, and fewer options for navigating a drug charge without it having permanent consequences.

That having been said, there are still many ways to wins these cases or at least mitigate their impact.  That is why it is critically important that someone work with an experienced defense attorney who has extensive practice experience in the Prince William County area.

Virginia Trends in Drug Cases and Enforcement

There is a trend in Virginia generally on how drug-related charges are treated. The easiest place to see this is simply to look at how the Virginia code is amended virtually every session of the general assembly to make drug laws tougher, to give law enforcement more resources, and to make penalties stiffer.

Virginia remains a extremely conservative state at the level of general assembly and they are notorious for having some of the toughest laws in the country on a variety of offenses but particularly on drug offenses. So, whereas we can see in other jurisdictions around the country, marijuana for example is either becoming legal or has become a civil offense with penalties that are not terribly significant, Virginia seems to be many, many years if not decades away from changes like that.

The trend in Virginia, for now, continues to be tougher laws, new laws which makes additional kinds of behavior illegal, laws that close loopholes, and laws that make penalties tougher.