Idaho authorities bust a dozen head shops

While neighboring states Washington and likely Oregon will be deciding whether marijuana should be legal for all adults, my birth state of Idaho is still trying to put people in cages for selling pieces of glass.

District of Idaho U.S. Attorney Wendy Olson said she was not sure how much Spice was seized from shops that sell tobacco and smoking paraphernalia in Boise, Kuna, and Nampa Thursday but did say additional state or federal drug charges are possible against the 16 people indicted on paraphernalia charges.

Olson said the Boise-area “headshops” were selling drug paraphernalia to drug users and traffickers under the guise of tobacco products, which allowed a federal grand jury to return the felony charges of conspiracy to sell, offer for sale and transport drug paraphernalia; offering drug paraphernalia for sale; and sale of drug paraphernalia. Those crime are punishable by up to three years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Olson said at least nine of the 13 shops were openly selling Spice, and several of those stores sold the synthetic marijuana to undercover officers.

Idaho has some of the toughest statutes in the nation regarding paraphernalia and simple pot smoking.  Merely being in a place where people smoke pot is a misdemeanor worth 3 months in jail.  If you are found to be stoned in public, you can get 6 months in jail.  Being caught with a pot pipe (with no pot) can get you a year in prison.  If you’re caught with some pot, there’s another year in prison.  If you do any of this around a child, the crimes rise to a felony with 5 years in prison.  Selling pipes, bongs, grinders, and kief boxes in Idaho is a felony worthy of nine years in prison and a $30,000 fine.

But what happens if you don’t smoke pot and instead impregnate your underage girlfriend and then abuse your infant so severely it dies at the age of three months from blunt force trauma?

RUPERT • The father of an infant who died in 2008 from multiple injuries was sentenced Monday to serve 3 1/2 years in prison for felony injury to a child.

Three-month-old Nivea Lopez died Dec. 19, 2008, in a Pocatello hospital after receiving injuries that included skull fractures and healed rib fractures.

Monday’s sentence will run concurrent with a two- to 10-year prison term Lopez received for violating his probation on a rape conviction, stemming from the statutory nature of his relationship with Martinez.

Got that?  Beat your baby to death = 3.5 years.  Smoke pot around your baby = 5 years.  Sell someone a bong = 9 years.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom… but I hope you understand why I don’t visit often.