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Humans can detect smoked marijuana on clothing, hair, etc. Dogs can detect unsmoked marijuana inside containers. My meaning wasn't that humans would deliberately take on the role of drug-sniffing canines, just that if an officer smells marijuana from the clothing of a person, would that be probable cause to search a car? I'm curious as to how much common sense, along with observing constitutional rights, is involved in the process.

Probable cause is anything a cop wants it to be. I got harassed in a parking lot once where the police walked over to my car and started peering inside (presumably because I had long hair and looked funny.) They saw a brass incense burner on the front seat (that I had just purchased) and told me that it was probable cause because incense is used to mask the smell of pot. Maybe where you come from that's common sense--I leave it to you to decide. To me, it was police harassment and an illegal search. But I am sure it happens every single day, with the approval of the anti-drug borgoise.

"if an officer smells marijuana from the clothing of a person, would that be probable cause to search a car?"

Anything readily apparent to a human police officer's senses is covered under 'plain view' searches. If you leave some pot on your dashboard, he can absolutely bust you for it. If your whole car stinks of alcohol, he can certainly search your car and test to see if you're drunk. If he hears someone screaming for help from your trunk, he can absolutely search the trunk. Anything that a human officer can detect with any of his senses during the normal course of his duty (such as writing you a ticket for speeding) is fair game.

The reason is two-fold. Number one, it's to protect the life of the officer. If you have a gun on your passenger seat, it's not much effort for you to grab it and shoot the cop while he's writing your ticket. If the cop isn't allowed to take that gun out of the situation, then that danger remains unnecessarily. The other reason is the lack of an expectation of privacy. If you happen to like Playboy magazines, you have the right to not make that well-known. To do so, you might hide them under the seat of your car. No one can see them and an officer cannot detect them. However, if you nail them to the side of your car, then you cannot expect the fact that you've got the Jan '05 Playboy to remain private. In other words, you have no expectation of privacy for any item which is in 'plain view'. The logical extension goes to anything which can be detected by the senses of a human police officer.