Medical marijuana user says police took his pot – Los Angeles Times
A medical marijuana user has filed a $1-million lawsuit against Seal Beach police for taking up to 50 of his pot plants and allegedly forcing him to become an informant.The Orange County Superior Court lawsuit filed last month by Bruce Benedict, 43, of Seal Beach, said he’s a marijuana patient and caregiver who is allowed by California law to grow and distribute marijuana.
Benedict alleged he called police because of illegal construction in his apartment building and officers smelled marijuana. County prosecutors refused to file charges so officers returned to Benedict’s apartment later with federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents in tow, according to the suit.
The pot was confiscated and Benedict was arrested. California law allows medical marijuana but federal law prohibits it.
Benedict’s suit said police officers asked him to move out of the city and become an informant in various drug matters. Benedict complied, alleging police told him he would face federal charges if he didn’t work for them.
The city has declined comment.
Do these local police have no sense? You have medical marijuana patients who are obeying the law, living in a state that overwhelmingly supports medical marijuana. So your response to his complaint about illegal construction, you sic the feds on him?
Great. Now you’ve terrorized thousands of other law-abiding medical marijuana patients who won’t be so quick to call local law enforcement when they witness a crime or dangerous situation in progress. That’s the way to build safe neighborhoods – encourage the neighbors to hide away in their apartments and not call police when their neighbors could be in danger.
The erosion of citizens’ respect for the law and law enforcement is one of the rarely mentioned harms of the War on Marijuana. The most recent NSDUH says that there are 100 million Americans (40.6% of pop. 12 and older) who have tried marijuana at least once in their life. 14.4 million Americans (5.8% of pop. 12 and older) have used marijuana in the past month. A 2004 NSDUH estimated 3.1 million Americans smoke marijuana almost daily (>300 days per year).
How much safer would our neighborhoods be if between 3-14 million Americans weren’t intimidated to call police for fear of revealing their marijuana stash or personal garden? Not to mention how much safer those neighborhoods would be without the robberies and violence prohibition creates! Recently I heard five gunshots go off three houses down the block at midnight. I called 911 immediately, because as a registered Oregon caregiver, my few ounces of stash are well below the pound-and-a-half limit. If I was still living in Idaho, I might think twice about calling and hope someone else is calling.
Think of all that police money, time, and effort that goes into arresting 872,000 marijuana smokers each year. At least $7.7 billion is spent at the federal and state level enforcing marijuana prohibition. A cop once told me a marijuana arrest takes an hour of his time, so that’s about equivalent to having 436 federal and state officers doing nothing but making marijuana busts every hour every day for a year (think of it as one full-time nothing-but-marijuana-arrests cop for every Congressional district). That doesn’t factor in manpower and helicopter time to rip up every marijuana plant they find, which is 98% unsmokable feral ditchweed, nor does it take into account courts, clerks, and paperwork time.
