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There was a funny case some time back, local cops where a relative lives were estimating utterly nutty "street values" for busting college students with pot pla

by _jal 5y ago

There was a funny case some time back, local cops where a relative lives were estimating utterly nutty "street values" for busting college students with pot plants. A journalist starts asking questions, and finally figured out they were calculating value by weighing the live plants - dirt, pot and all.

pdpi 5y ago
There was a whole thing about how, legally, LSD for personal use landed you in more trouble than LSD for trafficking, because the penalties are by weight, and that include the carrier paper for personal use, but only the crystals for trafficking. EDIT: This was specifically addressed in 1993, in amendment 488 to the US sentencing guidelines. https://www.ussc.gov/guidelines/amendment/488 https://www.ussc.gov/guidelines/amendment/488. This 1992 article from the LA Times details some of the consequences — https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-07-27-mn-4335-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-07-27-mn-4335-s...
SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
> they were calculating value by weighing the live plants - dirt, pot and all. You can forbid that specific corrupt practice; but as long as the incentives are to produce a high value, then ways will be found to inflate it to an unrealistic number.