Logic would say "of course not they cant arrest you if HE has the drugs on him and says they are his, how could you know? Are you suppose to do a strip search on every person who gets into your car?" But the sad fact is that they can definately arrest you for your passengers drugs. I dont know how it is in other places, but in New Jersey, there is a charge called "possession of CDS in motor vehicle." Thats the thing they charge the driver with when the passenger has drugs. Im sure there is other charges they use, but that one in particular is one that I am familiar with personally, my man got hit with that charge once when his friend had the drugs on him in his car, and he was charged with possession once when I had the drugs on me in his car. he had no drugs or nothing on him, but they hit him with possession for the shit that i had on me, since i was in his car.
If your passenger has somethin on them, you are responsible for it.
Even if you dont know....Even if they swear they aint got shit. Even if you ask them direclty before you let them in your car and they say no, and then it turns out they had somethin on them....you can get charged.
I seen it happen many times, and its pretty common....Cops can use their discretion and choose not to charge you...but they usually will.
Think about it...If it was that easy to get off something like that, nobody would ever get charged for being the driver when the passenger copped drugs, etc...."My friend asked me to drive him to so and so corner, he didnt tell me it was for DRUGS! He just told me we were goin to white castle!" how do THEY know if you GENUINELY didnt know about the drugs he had on him or not? Its only your word , and that has NEVER been sometin that cops trust before, so i dont know why youd think they would start now.
It seems really stupid and unfair that cops can act like this, but think about how many cops minds work. if your friend has drugs why wouldnt you be a druggie too? A "good kid" wouldnt hang out with a "druggie", so he cant be innocent. Dumb shit like that. they are gonna see you as guilty, and legally they can charge you. "innocent until proven guilty" got nothin to do with this...you guilty cuz your friends guilty in your car, basically.
Its really up to them, whether to give you the benefit of the doubt or not, but most of the time , the idea that the driver is responsible for anything in the car, is the overwhelming conclusion that they come to.
So...to make a long story short....Yes, you can get arrested, and charged with the drugs your passenger has, even if they are on him and he says they are only his and not yours.