Can I be charged if the drugs weren't mine?

This one is worth making concrete, because the distinction is genuinely counterintuitive.

Take a pair of glasses. I own these glasses, and I also currently possess them. But if I set them down on the table between us, I still own them — and now we could both be charged with possessing them, if the glasses happened to be illegal.

Why? Because we both know the item is there. We can both exercise control over it. Either of us could reach out and take it.

That's constructive possession, and it means "they weren't mine" doesn't answer the charge. Ownership isn't the question the statute asks.

What *does* answer it is the knowledge and control analysis — whether the State can prove you knew of the substance's presence and could exercise dominion over it. In a shared space, that's frequently harder for the State than the arrest report suggests.

This is an issue that needs a strong defense rather than an explanation.