AT GOVERNOR'S MANSION, YARD HAS GONE TO POT

Gov. Bill Owens may want to take the war on drugs to his own backyard.

In back of the Governor's Mansion on East Eighth Avenue in Denver, what
appeared to be a marijuana plant was allowed to grow knee-high from a bed
of bluebells and clover.

Owens and his staff said they have no idea where the green, leafy plant
came from, and it's highly unlikely that Owens is grooming his own stash of
hash.

"This is obviously a planted story," said Owens spokesman Dick Wadhams,
tongue in cheek. Wadhams also jokingly said it may be a conspiracy against
the governor by potential Democratic opponents: state Sens. Bob Hagedorn
and Stan Matsunaka and businessman Rollie Heath.

"It's clearly a joint effort by Hagedorn, Heath and Matsunaka to discredit
the governor," he said. "We believe they're just blowing smoke." Within
minutes of being asked about it by a Denver Post reporter, state workers
yanked it from the lush gardens that line the sidewalk along Logan Street
and later said it tested negative for being marijuana. However, experts
from the Denver Botanic Gardens said the plant is of the smoking variety,
Cannabis sativa, which rarely grows in the wild. Neither the Colorado State
Patrol nor Wadhams could identify the plant. "It's probably just some kind
of weed," said State Patrol Technician Tim McClinchy, who tested the plant.
"There are some weeds that look like marijuana. It's a common mistake."

A reporter from The Post took a leaf from the plant to a team of the
renowned garden's researchers Thursday after a story and photo in
Thursday's Colorado Springs Independent by Cara DeGette first raised the
issue and suggested that the plant might be pot.

Several experts at the Botanic Gardens compared the leaf to those in their
vast plant collection. It was a dead-on match with Cannabis sativa plants.
Even if it is marijuana, the State Patrol said such a plant at the
Governor's Mansion, which Owens uses mainly for official functions, is a
fluke. Since his inauguration in 1999, Owens and his family have continued
to live in Aurora.

"It's just one plant? Someone was probably smoking a joint and flipped it,
or the wind took a seed and blew it in," State Patrol Sgt. N.A. Nathlich
said. "There's a lot of traffic by there."

Needless to say, some folks still found a bit of levity in the fact that
Colorado's tough-on-drugs governor might have a little wacky weed growing
in his garden.

"I think they should shake the governor down and give him a drug test,"
said Ken Gorman, who said he will run against Owens in 2004 on a
pro-marijuana ticket.