Reporting a past drug offence to FAA examiner

intern_mike

intern_mike

E-175 f/o
I will be starting flight school soon and I wiil be in need of a FAA medical exam. My question pertains to checking the blocks regarding drug and alcohol offenses and other legal encounters. When I was in highschool I (along with some friends) was caught with a small amount of marijuana. I was placed into a court oppointed diversion program. Having successfully completed that program the charge was adjudication withheld. Essentially, there was no charge and the case was dismissed. Do I still need to report this on the medical exam?
 
I am going to add somehting to that suggestion:

Questions about convictions and other "legal" encounters are as much legal questions as they are a medical ones (maybe more). On top of that, rules about whether a "withheld adjudication" are convictions or not vary from state to state and sometimes even from court to court and judge to judge. Only an attorney who understands both the legal process you went through and the FAA requirements can give to a "best answer" to this.

As the doc suggested, this might very well be a "no harm, no foul" situation, in which case reporting it even if you don't technically have to may be no big deal. But it may not take anything more than a quirk in your explanatory note (or the AME's) to end up with an inquiry to obtain your records for review, and those might not even exist any longer.
 
I will try and ask my doc off the record what he thinks. This is really a non-issue. Plus I don't really feel obligated to say anything due to the fact that there was no conviction, i.e. no record of it, and that I am drug free.
 
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