PHIL IN THE BLANK: Dope on display

The pile of drugs on the table at the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office presented a daunting and sad display for Sheriff Michael Bouchard’s press conference last week.
One-and-a-half kilos of cocaine, which is about three-and-a-third pounds, 1,022 grams of heroin and fentanyl mix, 37 grams pure fentanyl, 600 grams of cutting agents, and 20 pounds of marijuana, all bagged and tagged and topped with a .40 caliber Taurus pistol, all made for quite the pile.
It smelled, too, mostly from the marijuana.
If the Narcotics Enforcement Team hadn’t done their investigation and seized it in search warrants, all of that would have been packaged into thousands of much smaller bags and sold to users all over the Detroit metro area, including some to customers in Clarkston.
The effects show up in our Public Safety page regularly, people overdosing on heroin or other opioid in their bathrooms, waiting to be revived with a dose of Naloxone, young adults or teens caught parked on a dark street somewhere, in a car smelling of dope, etc.
The marijuana made the bulkiest pile at the news conference, stacked up a bag at a time almost endlessly at one end of the table. This is a strange time when marijuana is supposed to be legal for medical as well as recreational use in Michigan, but it can still get you in trouble, certainly when it’s in that amount.
The suspects probably didn’t check with the Michigan Regulation and Taxation of Marihuana Act to make sure they were in compliance.
Many things still need to be worked out with that law, such as how are you actually supposed to spell it – “marijuana” or “marihuana?”
I’ve always found legal intoxicants and medications adequate whenever I felt the need for it so I’ve never used cannabis or any other illegal drug, but I voted to legalize marijuana/marihuana, along with the majority in this state last November.
I still don’t know how to get any, though. Certainly not through the group of suspects arrested last week.
I probably won’t try it until it reaches the point where it can be stocked at my local grocery store along with the beer and liquor.

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