My neighbors are smoking pot around their kids -- can the cops do anything to stop it?

Q: I smell marijuana coming from my neighbors who have two young children. I'm concerned about the kids and want to know if police can do anything if I call them? -- AndreA: "Well, Andre this is a question we get quite a lot and I wish there was a good answer to it, but there is not. With the change in marijuana law in this state, if you look at it simply by comparing it to alcohol that's probably the best way to think about it. So, marijuana is a legal substance. People can use it in their homes. It can't be used in public, but it can be used in the privacy of people's homes by state law and so if you look at the way police are treating it, the way the courts are treating it, generally speaking we treat it like alcohol, so if a person is using alcohol or if it's, for example, you mentioned there's an odor of marijuana coming from another person's house, that might be annoying, but it's not illegal. As long as they're using it in the privacy of their own home and on their own property that is legal. It doesn't mean they're good neighbors. They might not be very considerate, but it is legal. And if a person has kids in the home it may seem like a bad thing to you, it may seem like a bad thing to a lot of people, but it's not illegal for people to use marijuana in the privacy of their own homes, even if there's kids there and that is one of the outcomes of the change in our law. It's an evolving law and the courts may take a different approach to this, but right now it's not illegal." -- Bremerton Police Chief Steve Strachan