Have you been accused of committing a drug offense? If you have, then you need to know how best to protect yourself, especially given the fact that a conviction on drug charges can have serious ramifications. In some instances, you might be facing the possibility of years in prison in addition to extensive fines and damage to your reputation. Your criminal record could even affect your professional license if you possess one. So, taking aggressive action to avoid all penalties, or at least the harshest of those sought by prosecutors, is imperative.

To prepare a strong criminal defense, you need to understand the law or laws that are in play. By doing so, you can look for weaknesses in the prosecution’s case, which can serve as ammunition during plea negotiations or at trial.

For example, if you’ve been accused with possession of a controlled substance with the intent to distribute, then the prosecution needs to prove two elements: possession and intent to distribute. This is no small feat. Merely intending to distribute drugs isn’t enough for a conviction under this law if an individual has yet to acquire any narcotics, and merely possessing narcotics isn’t enough to show an intent to distribute. Of course, the presence of any packaging materials and scales may work against you in supporting a prosecution’s claims that you had intent to distribute, but these cases are highly fact-sensitive.

So what can you do if you are accused of a drug crime? Regardless of whether it’s possession or possession with intent to distribute, consider these criminal defense options:

There’s a lot at stake when facing drug charges. If convicted, our freedom could be stripped from you, leaving you and your family in a dire predicament. These are tough times, but you can get through it. To help you fight aggressive prosecutors, competent criminal defense attorneys stand ready to assess the facts at hand and utilize the law in the most beneficial way to protect accused individual’s interests.