BIG ISLAND PLAN FOR POT GOES UP IN SMOKE

HILO, Hawai'i -- It was a simple, if provocative, idea: Big Island police
regularly harvest marijuana, and county officials reasoned the state might
need some for patients who use cannabis under the state's medical marijuana
law.

So, the county offered to supply the state with pot.

As it turns out, the situation isn't simple at all, and the state doesn't
want the county's marijuana.

That oddball bit of intergovernmental communication began in 2001, when the
Hawai'i County Council approved a resolution authorizing Mayor Harry Kim to
accept federal money to help pay for marijuana eradication missions.

The resolution imposed a number of conditions on the program, including
instructions that there were to be no aerial herbicide spraying and no
rappelling from helicopters within 500 feet of houses during the raids.

The council added a section instructing county police to work with the
state to "develop a plan where a portion of the confiscated marijuana can
be set aside for medical marijuana use."

Councilman Gary Safarik, who represents Upper and Lower Puna, where much of
the Big Island's illegal marijuana crop is grown, said he and Councilman
Curtis Tyler got the idea for redistributing confiscated marijuana from
constituents who use medical marijuana and complained that neighbors were
stealing their plants.

Safarik, a former Honolulu police officer, said some of his old police
buddies ribbed him about the resolution, but Big Island police gamely
approached the state about the idea.

Not likely, replied Kurt Spohn, deputy attorney general. In a written
response to the county, Spohn warned that anyone who tries to implement the
council's novel proposal risks federal prosecution.

And as the chief law enforcement authority in the state, the attorney
general won't knowingly violate a federal law prohibiting marijuana by
developing a plan to distribute the stuff, Spohn wrote.