Turns out there may be something to the phrase “reefer madness” after all.
Momma Always Said Eat Your Greens
Just ask Tavish Smith, a woman from Brevard County, Florida who was pulled over and put in the back of a Florida Highway Patrol car. Smith apparently thought she might be able to get out her marijuana possession charge…by eating the marijuana while in the car. (What is it with Florida, anyway?)
To give a little more context for this: Smith was driving along US 1 around Cocoa, Florida when things started to go awry. She crashed the truck she was driving, drove the wrong way on the highway and then crashed again. It was around that time that she was pulled over by a patrol car, under more than reasonable suspicion of DUI.
After being pulled over, Smith was unusually giggly about the whole situation. Even when the police pulled her out of the car, even when her bag of marijuana was found in her backseat, even when she was put into the back of the squad car. To really cap it all off, Smith slipped out of her handcuffs and started eating the evidence, presumably to cover her tracks and not for any other desired effects.
It took the officer on hand a minute to realize she had slipped her cuffs, and another to discover she’d had the audacity to pull such a stunt. Before eating the pot, her misdemeanor charges for a minor hit-and-run, DUI and possession bumped up to felony offenses. Luckily for law enforcement, the officer in question was on it. As he so eloquently put it, “Bags of weed just don’t go missing inside a police car…and I’ve got it all on video.” Touché, officer.
Creative Disposal or Creative Marketplace?
But it wasn’t only Florida that had weed-related hijinks in the news lately. In Frederick, Maryland, an innocent woman named Carla McFarland was trying to reach for her French fries from a Sonic drive-thru and got more than she bargained for when she found a plastic baggie of weed along with the rest of her order.
Is it just me or does this sound like some kind of shady drug operation, where you order the number four with a wink and a nudge and go home with a baggie? Well, it seems that in this case, that wasn’t the situation. McFarland complained to the manager of the Sonic and to the police. The restaurant was apologetic, and the franchise owner John Louderback got involved as well.
Turns out that an employee’s personal baggie of weed somehow fell into the bag while the meal was being prepared. Louderback assured both McFarland and the press that the employee had been let go. As bizarre and funny as this story may seem, McFarland didn’t see the humor; accidentally being on the receiving end of a drug deal doesn’t leave a great taste in your mouth no matter how good the fries are, especially when your two kids are in the car.
Another Day, Another Dope
If there’s anything to take away from these incidents, maybe it’s that drug use makes strange bedfellows—or strange legal entanglements, at least. To be honest, I’m wondering how bad it can really be at Sonic if employees are bringing their stash into work and not just leaving it in the car. Possibly having to manage 1,063,953 different possible drink combinations is more than fast food workers can handle without an escape?
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