(KTVB) CALDWELL — A major pot bust on I-84 last night landed a 39-year-old Oregon man in jail, accused of felony trafficking. He was actually pulled over twice; the first time he was let go in Oregon because the suspect carried a medical marijuana card.
Idaho State Police accuse Justin Brownrigg, of Eugene, Oregon of bringing three duffel bags full of marijuana into Idaho. He was reportedly headed to Utah.
Brownrigg was first stopped by an Oregon State trooper on Wednesday. During the stop, the trooper smelled marijuana and questioned Brownrigg.
“[Brownrigg] advised and told the officer, ‘Hey, I’m a medical marijuana… and I have marijuana in the car and it’s under the prescribed amount in Oregon,” Canyon County Prosecutor Bryan Taylor said. “The Oregon State trooper under Oregon law couldn’t do anything, so he let him go.
How many times do we have to warn patients: do not flash your medical marijuana card to a cop like it’s a “Get Out of Jail Free” card. If a cop is questioning you at a traffic stop and says he smells marijuana, the proper response is… silence. You have that right. Use it. Force that cop to call in drug dogs and get a warrant and if that happens and you’re faced with arrest, you ask for your attorney and he or she can make your medical case for you.
Well, unless you’re using the medical marijuana law to hide your criminal interstate trafficking of 69 pounds of marijuana. Then maybe you don’t want dogs around.
The Oregon trooper alerted Idaho State Police.
Hmm, so you’re telling us a cop who pulled over a citizen and found him to be obeying the law then called a cop in a neighboring state to warn him this (as far as he knew) law-abiding citizen was coming through?
Once Brownrigg was near Caldwell on I-84, an officer says they saw Brownrigg speeding and stopped the car.
By the way, the speed limit on that stretch of I-84 is 75 MPH.
Brownrigg again mentioned his medical marijuana card and having a small amount of marijuana. In Idaho, possessing any amount is illegal, so the officer searched the car.
“They ended up searching his vehicle and found 69 pounds of marijuana,” Taylor said. “You don’t carry around 69 pounds of marijuana with the plan of smoking it. You plan on selling it… Definitely not ‘medicinal.’”
This case was one of ISP’s largest seizures, though Canyon County Prosecutor Bryan Taylor says his office is seeing more and more cases of marijuana trafficking from neighboring states where medical marijuana is legal.
“In the last month we’re starting to see a major increase in this particular issue. This is the sixth offense of very large quantities of marijuana, in which individuals are coming over from Oregon, saying that they’re trying to hide under the card, under the umbrella of this medical marijuana,” Taylor said.
And this is the problem of going partway with legalization of only medical uses of marijuana. The vast majority of people in the Oregon Medical Marijuana Program are diligently obeying the law, struggling to make do with a system that has no reasonable distribution of medicine, and genuinely using marijuana to treat serious medical conditions.
However, so long as 90% of Oregon’s pot smokers and 100% of Idaho’s and Utah’s pot smokers are criminals, there will always be a massive profit potential in hauling pounds of pot from one state to another. No criminals with any smarts isn’t going to try to take advantage of any way he can avoid prosecution.
Just as prohibitionists see a heroin user who started on pot and declare there to be a “gateway effect”, prohibitionists see a dealer who abuses the medical marijuana law and declares all patients to be frauds. If marijuana is legalized for all who want it and its distribution taxed and regulated, you won’t find many people driving pounds of it across state lines… except the licensed and inspected distributors of those products.
After all, when is the last time Idaho State Police stopped an Oregonian with cases of moonshine in the trunk?
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[...] confirm or deny that? Readers would benefit from your comments. What I do have a source for is the case of Justin Brownrigg. Justin Brownrigg was caught in Idaho with 69 pounds. I personally don’t think that is a smart [...]
[...] confirm or deny that? Readers would benefit from your comments. What I do have a source for is the case of Justin Brownrigg. Justin Brownrigg was caught in Idaho with 69 pounds. I personally don’t think that is a smart [...]
[...] confirm or deny that? Readers would benefit from your comments. What I do have a source for is the case of Justin Brownrigg. Justin Brownrigg was caught in Idaho with 69 pounds. I personally don’t think that is a smart [...]
My fiance was busted for 67 pounds of marijuana at the end of dec 2011. He has a bail set of 250,000 dollars…what!!!! are you kidding me! We also live in Oregon. He has never been in any trouble however they will not lower bail and offered him a deal of 5yrs. With the lack of jobs and little money, many people are taking this risk. We need to get pot legalized. Im not saying he should get in some trouble but 5 yrs for pot….come on now Idaho, get it together already.
The thing that stands out to me in this story is that the OR state trooper told the Idaho state police that this man was coming and had pot. This just proves once again that police dont just follow the law, like they say, but they choose what laws they want follow and what laws they want to HATE disregard and in this case work against at all costs. It seems to me that this OR state trooper hates the medical marijuana law in OR and by calling ahead to have a fellow OR citizen harassed and arrested in a different state, IMO was far more criminal than having 64lbs of pot!
Thats like a cop calling ahead to another state that has stricter vehicle laws and letting them know to pull over someone for having a improper window tint, setting up a fellow citizen to get in trouble. Its that same citizen that pays the salary of that cop and that cop isnt protecting or serving that citizen at all. If that OR state trooper had any concern for a fellow OR citizen he would have warned Brownrigg, “your leaving the state and for your own safety Idaho has no protections for that medical cannabis you have, be careful” Thats protecting and serving!
This makes me sick and just shows me more evidence that police are not here for serving nor protecting but to hunt us down like dogs, today its for cannabis, tomorrow it could be because your an Atheist or because you like Coke instead of RC Cola and that should be scary to everyone not just cannabis consumers!