Newsbrief:
In
Colorado
First,
Denver
Police
Return
Marijuana
to
Patient
3/11/05
On March 4, medical marijuana patient Thomas Lawrence made Colorado history as the Denver Police Department returned to him a bag of marijuana it had seized during a January 11 traffic stop. While Lawrence didn't have his permit with him when stopped, he did have a state medical marijuana permit, and he went to the police station on February 3 with a court order demanding the medicine be returned. Police initially balked, but last week the weed walked.
"They were really polite -- they apologized for the misunderstanding," said Lawrence. "It was simple; it was like picking up anything else... It was difficult for them to let go of, I guess." While Lawrence was happy to get his medicine back, his attorney, Robert Corry said police had acted improperly in seizing the marijuana in the first place. "The state government has no right to take his medicine from him... The police need an education on Colorado law. There are certain people who have a right to use medical marijuana," he said. Still, said Corry, the medicine's return was "a victory for the voters of Colorado" and for patients, who, he said, "for too long have been living in fear." But Lawrence still had one complaint: The condition of his medicine after nearly two months in police storage. "It's a little drier than I'd like," he said. PERMISSION to reprint or redistribute any or all of the contents of Drug War Chronicle (formerly The Week Online with DRCNet is hereby granted. We ask that any use of these materials include proper credit and, where appropriate, a link to one or more of our web sites. If your publication customarily pays for publication, DRCNet requests checks payable to the organization. If your publication does not pay for materials, you are free to use the materials gratis. In all cases, we request notification for our records, including physical copies where material has appeared in print. Contact: StoptheDrugWar.org: the Drug Reform Coordination Network, P.O. Box 18402, Washington, DC 20036, (202) 293-8340 (voice), (202) 293-8344 (fax), e-mail drcnet@drcnet.org. Thank you. Articles of a purely educational nature in Drug War Chronicle appear courtesy of the DRCNet Foundation, unless otherwise noted.
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