Migz420

Our View: The straight story
06-07-07|spokesman review

It makes a sensational story: Sixty-six-year-old Spokane great-grandma charged with a felony for tipping her delivery man in marijuana.

The felony charge sounds as half-baked as the state's own medical marijuana initiative. Surely Betty Crocker herself would be appalled.

We suspect there's a bit more to the story.

The one we're hearing from Christine Rose Baggett's attorney goes like this: The meek widow, who suffers from two forms of arthritis, herniated disks and a broken ankle, discovered marijuana eased her pain. One day in August last year, she paid for a 1-ounce supply of pot and told the delivery guy to keep a little for himself.

He retained a "nub," a portion about the size of a thumbnail. And after the police arrested them both, the delivery guy was charged with misdemeanor possession, while the grandma got slapped with a felony for delivery.

Even Baggett's attorney, Frank Cikutovich, agrees she made the wrong decision. Baggett didn't find a doctor to authorize her to use the drug for medical purposes until after her arrest. But charge her with a misdemeanor, Cikutovich declares, not a go-to-prison, lose-your-right-to-vote felony.

In Cikutovich's version, there can be only one conclusion: That felony charge is over the top. But stay tuned for more details.

Spokane County Deputy Prosecutor John Grasso says much of this amazing tale didn't appear in the police report. In that document, it appears Baggett made the delivery, not the other way around.

"What does a drug dealer look like?" he asks. The fact that Baggett has grandkids certainly makes the story juicier, but Grasso's not sure it's relevant. While his office avoids prosecuting legitimate medical marijuana users, it's certainly gone after elderly people who were growing 150 marijuana plants, say, or dealing cocaine or methamphetamine. Criminals come in all ages and both genders, after all.

And if defense attorney Cikutovich has more information to share, Grasso says with a chuckle, he knows the way to the prosecutor's office.

But Cikutovitch had a few stops to make first – such as "The Mark Fuhrman Show." The tale of the pot-smoking grandma does a remarkable job of bringing attention to this state's loopy medical marijuana law.

We don't disagree. So far, the law smacks of politics, not science. It doesn't provide people who have legitimate medical reasons for using the drug a legal way to buy it. Nor does it monitor the dose or the quality of the substance they use.

But now's the time for the two attorneys to do their best to get, if not Mrs. Baggett, at least the story itself straight.

And no matter how this case turns out, we have one piece of advice for this Spokane woman's progeny: Stay away from Grandma's brownies.

Buzzby

I suspect he means a "nug". One definition of "nub" is "a small lump", but I've never heard it used as a measure of marijuana.

If it was his grandmother being charged with a felony, I doubt that he'd be making jokes about it.

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