Court Opinion

ID: 9582048
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:21:58.345499+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:37:25.033090
License: Public Domain

OAKS, Justice
(concurring):
I concur in reversing the conviction because there is no proof that the defendant delivered drug paraphernalia “knowing” that it would be used in violation of the Act, as required in U.C.A., 1953, § 58-37a-5(2). The statutory requirement of knowledge will make it extremely difficult to enforce this provision of the present legislation, but we are bound by the terms of the law enacted by the Legislature.
Utah’s legislation was patterned after the Model Drug Paraphernalia Act. Over forty states have adopted drug paraphernalia legislation, most patterned after the Model Act. Comment, “The Constitutionality of Anti-Drug Paraphernalia Laws — The Smoke Clears,” 58 Notre Dame L.Rev. 833, 842 (1983). The comparable provision of the Model Act makes it a crime for a person to deliver drug paraphernalia “knowing, or under circumstances where one reasonably should know" that it would be used in violation of the Act. Comment, id. at 861 (emphasis added). Our Legislature omitted the emphasized language in its enactment of the Model Act. That omission, which leaves no alternative to the requirement that the prosecution prove actual knowledge, dictates the result of this case.
Our holding should not be understood as casting doubt on the feasibility and enforceability of so-called “head shop” legislation. State legislation utilizing the Model Act’s “reasonable knowledge” requirement has almost invariably been sustained against constitutional challenges for vagueness. Stoianoff v. Montana, 695 F.2d 1214, 1220-22 (9th Cir.1983); Kansas Retail Trade Coop v. Stephan, 695 F.2d 1343, 1346 (10th Cir.1982), and cases cited.
Another deviation from the terms of the Model Act introduces a vagueness that makes me doubtful about the validity of several provisions of the Utah legislation. For example, § 58-37a-5(2) makes it illegal for a person “to deliver ... any drug paraphernalia, knowing that [it] will be used to plant, propagate, cultivate ... contain, conceal, inject, ingest, inhale, or otherwise introduce a controlled substance into the human body in violation of this act.” (Emphasis added.) On its face, this provision requires that in order to constitute a crime the drug paraphernalia must be delivered by one who knows that it will be used “to fyarious uses listed]_a controlled substance into the human body.” As to the last three verbs in the series, this sentence makes sense (e.g., to “inhale a controlled *1226substance into the human body”). However, as to the first eighteen verbs (“plant” through “conceal”) the sentence yields a meaning varying from the improbable {e.g., “used to ... repack ... a controlled substance into the human body”) to the nonsensical (e.g., “used to ... cultivate ... a controlled substance into the human body”). The same puzzling syntax occurs in §§ 58-37a-3 and 58-37a-5(l).
The apparent problem is the Utah enactment’s repositioning of the words “into the human body” from the position they occupied in the Model Act. The comparable provision of the Model Act makes it illegal for a person to “deliver ... drug paraphernalia, knowing, or under circumstances where one reasonably should know, that it will be used to plant, propagate, cultivate, ... contain, conceal, inject, ingest, inhale, or otherwise introduce into the human body a controlled substance in violation of this Act.” (Emphasis added.) Thus, in the Model Act the words “into the human body” only modify the words “otherwise introduce” and the entire series of legal proscriptions makes sense. In the Utah legislation, on the other hand, the words “into the human body” are not so limited. Their positioning makes them part of the object of the sentence — -“a controlled substance into the human body,” which, as a matter of necessary grammatical construction, yields meanings so at variance with common sense that the entire statute is suspect for vagueness.
DURHAM, J., concurs in the concurring opinion of OAKS, J.