IF YOU GOT 'EM, SMOKE 'EM

THE POT LEGALIZATION CROWD HASN'T had much to celebrate lately. Nobody in
law enforcement seems to care much about Prop. 215, the medical marijuana
initiative that y'all passed in 1996. Of course, no one's policing the
police, so they can do whatever they want.

Meanwhile, the golden savior of grass growers everywhere, Dennis Peron, got
the 1.3 percent that any blithering fool deserves in the governor's race in
June. And those votes probably came from the astute voters who thought he
was Evita's husband.

The vigilant red eye of the legalization movement finally glimpsed a glimmer
of good news this week, though. Seems a judge in Simi Valley ordered the
Simi Valley fuzz to return 13 marijuana plants they ripped from the back
yard of Dean Jones, a diabetic who had a note from his doctor to smoke pot.
Jones headed straight to the Simi Valley Police evidence room, where they
handed him some brown paper bags. He said he only got 10 of his 13 plants
back. We can only guess what may have happened to the other three. Lost in
the shuffle, probably.

The plants he did get back hadn't been dried properly. In fact, they hadn't
been dried at all. The cops just ripped them out of the ground and stuffed
them in bags, so they emerged as moldy balls of decaying muck.

Jones is happy that he can go home and grow more pot without fear, but he's
decided to seek revenge on the cops who killed his garden and stuffed him in
the slam for 14 hours. He's suing them for $4,000 per plant. That may seem
like a lot of money, but it happens to be the value placed on the plants by
the cops themselves. The police have been attaching inflated values to
confiscated marijuana for years. They use some absurd formula in which each
sprout equals 2.5 pounds. That way they look good when sycophantic police
reporters write about their big busts in the paper: "COPS SEIZE $250,000 IN
POT!" a typical headline screams. It's only when you read the small print
that you find out they snatched a baggie of stems and seeds from some high
school kids.

Maybe their outrageously inflated values will come back to bite them where
it hurts. Of course, if they have to pay, it's really the rest of us who
have to pay for this kind of tomfoolery. But, hey, it could set an
interesting precedent. Either plaintiffs in these kinds of cases will win
big bucks, or else headlines will start shouting, "COPS SEIZE DIDDLY SQUAT POT!"

And I bet police departments that want to avoid lawsuits will have to take
better care of the pot plants they confiscate. Tin foil will appear on the
walls of police evidence rooms, with high-pressure lights dangling from the
ceilings and buckets of water and fertilizer nearby. God knows they've
already got the equipment.

Checked-by: Melodi Cornett