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Wacky weed gets closer scrutiny
7/1/'07 | Texarkana Gazette | by Marie Martin

ASHDOWN, Ark.—A passer-by noticed some funny stuff growing in the City of Ashdown’s planter and called the police Thursday morning. The 4-foot plant, also known as wacky-tabacky, crazy weed, cannabis and a multitude of other urban terms, had been growing there for some time before being detected. “The caller thought the plant looked suspicious, but they weren’t certain,” said Ashdown Police Chief Ben McGraw. A typical plant has five leaves and can sometimes have as many as 10 leaves. It may be difficult to identify the plant, especially in a flower bed. Lupine, a self-pollinated perennial with five leaf characteristics, can be mistaken for marijuana, and it too grows to nearly 4 feet. The difference is that lupine has a purple bonnet flower that looks like a bluebonnet.

Spider Flower, or Grandfather’s Whiskers, plentiful in Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma, is another flower that can be mistaken for the illegal weed. Marijuana has a very small flower with purple petals that are also called buds, which have psychedelic properties. It is considered a narcotic. Deemed illegal by most states in the mid ’30s and taxed before 1940, the plant is thought to have medical properties that have caused some to petition the government for decriminalization.

Criminalization and mandatory sentencing for possessing the plant did not appear in the United States until after 1952. In Arkansas, cultivation of the plant is punishable beginning with an ounce and can range in punishment from four years to 30 years depending on the amount seized. “This was just a little plant,” said McGraw, who thought the matter trivial. “The caller said it might have been a wild garden plant, but we had to go out there,” said McGraw.

After receiving the call, McGraw went to the beautification planter on Highway 71. He identified it and pulled it out. “That’s it. There really wasn’t much to it,” he said. According to police, the marijuana plant wasn’t cultivated. “Cultivated plants have been groomed and pruned,” says Detective Doyle Crouch.

Cultivating the plant would lend credence to ownership, but the condition of the plant found at Ashdown put it in the “ditchweed” category. Ditchweed is a wild cannabis plant, the non-psychoactive version. Whatever the version of the plant, it is no longer in the City of Ashdown. McGraw said he can only speculate about how it got there. “Maybe someone planted it there as a joke or maybe a bird dropped it,” McGraw said

 

reggie_the_dog

If a city official ever watered the plant while working for the city then the city is guilty of cultivation.

Buzzby

no intent = no crime

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reggie_the_dog

Basically without toleration of ditchweed nearly every farmer in Illinois or Wisconsin (just to name a couple of states) would have been considered a drug kingpin for the wild feral hemp that grows.

Buzzby

No intent = no crime