Cops to OC man: Here's your pot

Three years after Huntington Beach police raided Jim Spray's one-man pot-growing operation, they returned the four ounces of medical marijuana and a small amount of hashish they confiscated because a judge ruled it shouldn't have been seized in the first place, the OC Register reports:

"That's a chunk of hash," said Spray, a 52-year-old trade show decorator from Huntington Beach. A tall, stocky police official watched as the medical marijuana patient inspected a tiny, eye shadow-sized container full of hashish.

"It's still good. I almost forgot about all this," said Spray, who uses medical marijuana because of pain from a herniated disc.

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The order came nearly nine months after the 4th District Court of Appeal ruled that the city must return Spray's marijuana and equipment taken from his home in November 2005. Spray was represented by attorneys with medical marijuana advocacy group Americans for Safe Access.

It's the second time the Huntington Beach police have had to return pot to its owner. Six months ago, a court ruling forced them to give back the Purple Urkel taken from Dave Lucas. Though California  allows the use of medical marijuana, federal law doesn't. Between growing clubs and pot dispensaries, it's a legal netherworld that Jerry Brown, California's attorney general, has tried to address with new guidelines. And that pot farm in the photo? Legal. For now.

-- Veronique de Turenne

Photo: Robert Durell / Los Angeles Times

Comments

[Lou Hailu]

That's why i love SoCal.
Despite the high cost of living,the smog,the traffic jam and the violence you are shall i say "a trendsetter".

[sara_h]

that kind of issue is exactly why jerry brown released the guidelines for medical marijuana a few weeks ago--finally police have some guidelines for how to deal with medical marijuana patients.

http://medicalmarijuana.procon.org/viewadditionalresource.asp?resourceID=1735

[A. Stern]

I am really fed up with articles making it seem so hard for cops to determine who is and who isn't a medical marijuana patient.

It's simple: if they have a card or recommendation from their physician -- and there is no evidence of them selling to non-patients -- the cops should leave the patient and their medicine alone.

The media continue to obfuscate this very simple point:

Unless there is evidence of real criminal activity (selling to non-patients) the cops need to stop harassing California's medical marijuana patients.

Maybe the cops could focus on violent crime, considering arrests for cannabis exceed the number of arrest for all violent crime combined.

End the Insanity.