Weed Watch

And now one from the Dept. of Turnabout is Fair Play: Back in March 2002, Portland, Ore., police became Dumpster divers, riffling through the trash of a fellow officer, 13-year veteran cop Gina Hoesly, in an attempt to find evidence linking her to rumors that she had been doing drugs, reports Willamette Week. The cops hit pay dirt, scoring traces of cocaine and methamphetamine, among other things. It was only after the trash score that the cops were able to obtain a warrant to search Hoesly's house, where they found drug paraphernalia and a diary that allegedly referred to her drug use. Judge Jean Kerr Maurer, however, ruled that the cops' trashcapade was illegal. "This particular very unique and very by-herself judge took a position not in concert with the other judges who had given us instruction by their decisions across the years," Portland Police Chief Mark Kroeker told WW. The district attorney's office has said they will appeal the ruling.

But that isn't the end of this trashy little story. WW reporters Chris Lydgate and Nick Budnick decided in turn to sift the garbage of Portland's top dogs: Police Chief Kroeker, DA Mike Schrunk, and Mayor Vera Katz. While Budnick and Lydgate reported that DA Schrunk took the whole incident in fairly good humor, neither Kroeker nor Katz were amused. Said the mayor in a press release: "I feel I need to speak out against Willamette Week's actions: If they can do it to me, they could do it to anyone else. I consider Willamette Week's actions in this matter to be potentially illegal and absolutely unscrupulous and reprehensible. I will consider all my legal options in response to their actions." For the full text of the WW story, check out www.wweek.com/flatfiles/News3485.lasso.

In other ironic drug news, according to recent articles in The New York Times and the Drug Reform Coordination Network newsletter, governors in Oklahoma, Kentucky, and California are either embarking on or contemplating programs to help ease state budget shortfalls by releasing certain nonviolent offenders -- including drug offenders. The budget shortfall message apparently hasn't made its way to the White House Office of the National Drug Control Policy or the National District Attorneys Association, which are teaming up to more aggressively prosecute pot smokers, reports DRCNet. "The role you play as prosecutors is indispensable to our success in fighting the normalization of marijuana," NDAA President Dan Alsobrooks wrote in a recent communiqué.