The war on drugs hit an embarrassing new low earlier this month with the search of former Bel Aire Mayor Harold Smith’s house. The Bel Aire police suspected Smith and his wife, both senior citizens, of growing marijuana in their backyard. So nearly a dozen officers spent about 45 minutes searching their home, including looking in dresser drawers, before realizing that the plants were . . . sunflowers. Bel Aire contracted for an independent review to see how it was possible for the police — plus the Sedgwick County district attorney’s office and a district judge — to mistake our state flower for pot. Sounds like they were the ones on drugs.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
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20 Comments
Want to bet this one gets swept under the rug!
I bet this has nothing to do with Sunflowers, and it is just being used as an excuse.
I’ll bet you that this has something to do with political foes of Harold Smith. Somebody wanted to embarrass him. Look towards somebody being on the city council of Bel Aire, and you will find who and why. ;)
Back during WWII, the federal government promoted the farming of low-quality marijuana for the manufacture of the rope needed in the war effort. Inevitably, some of the pot escaped harvest and became the “ditchweed” sought by desperate hippies.A number of years ago, the legislature debated spraying herbicide on all the wild marijuana in the state. The measure was defeated because, it was argued, the herbicide would also kill off the giant ragweed! Hey, I would have been quite happy to do without ditchweed if it meant an end to the ragweed!The upshot, of course, was that individual farmers were held responsible for recognizing and eradicating ditchweed. Some few were sent to jail, and many more got hassled bigtime.Now we,ve got a case of the people who are supposed to enforce these laws being totally unable to recognize the plant! While politics may have fueled an accusation, it’s up to police to know what they’re doing, and not serve a search warrant for sunflowers!
Agreed, Jed. My first thought was, dude, sunflowers are the STATE FLOWER. If an entire team of drug cops can’t tell the difference between a plant with giant flowers (the sunflower) and a plant with little tiny flowers that don’t even look like flowers (the marijuana), I can see why we’re losing the “war on drugs.”
If they want drugs, they should search Rush Limbaugh’s car . . .
Or my mother’s house, she had a marijuana plant in her living room for years, it made a great conversation piece!!
Do you think that just maybe they did not know they were sunflowers until they searched the house?
It was suspected that he was growing drugs, then they found he was not.
Well, to be fair, they weren’t conventional sunflowers… in fact, if you do a web search for that type of sunflower (maximilian?) you’ll see they don’t always look much like what I think of as sunflowers, even the wild sort.
On t’other hand, they don’t look much like marijuana, either.
My first thought, when my husband started telling me the story, wasn’t sunflowers. I once worked in a community garden, and had a big-eyed co-gardener bring me a five-part leaf and say “Look what I found growing in the church plot…” I told him, “Yeah, I *planted* that there.”
Eventually, I told him what it was: okra. (Which is, incidentally, like zucchini. Plant about half what you think you’ll need…)
Galahad,Yeah, when they’re in flower, they’re pretty easy to distinguish, but I knew people who surrounded their pot patch with sunflowers as camouflage. In the preflower stage, they do look a bit alike.That’s why, if you’re going to fight a war on plants, a degree in botany helps. The raid was a bonehead play for sure, but it also points out that either we give up this war on pot, or get the proper intelligence!
Also, we have a wide variety of sunflowers in this region. All of which hybridize with each other creating new variants. Some have big leaves, some have little leaves. None have a palmate leaf!
The search had to have a political motive.
Lets get Phill to train barbers & hairdressers to recognize signs of using the evil weed. They could turn in the 1/3 of the population and further burden our legal system with non-violent offenders.
Mary Jane is terrible stuff, after all, experimenting with weed could inadvertantly lead to abusing Presidential powers!
You don’t even have to inhale!
Connie and I tried sunflowers, no buzz at all. Never tried sunflowers for concealment, but field corn isn,t too bad a hiding place. lol Sunflower farmers in western Kansas had better watch out with the weed patrol on the loose.
maybe the cops were just plain old fashioned stupid. Guys that couldn’t get hired on with the WPD or the County. why does Bel Aire have dozen police on its payroll anyway the town has 1 or 2 thousand people tops. And if the entire police force is chasing down sunflowers who’s watching the bank?
Hey Pancho,Don’t knock it! There’s more cash value in an acre of high quality pot than there is in the bank vault. The cops are just trying to follow the money. Problem is, they wouldn’t know it if they saw it.
Ok, I live in Bel Aire. I don’t know the cops well, but I’ve talked to several of them and they seem ok. But they ARE cops. All cops are control freaks. All of em. And all cops have a little Nazi in them. Now why the cops couldn’t tell pot from sunflowers is a real mystery to me. I could understand if we were talking False Arailia or something, but sunflowers fer crissake? No sunflower I ever saw looked anything like pot.Bel Aire is like most small communities…Payton Place, and there are some political undercurrents, but somebody got way out of line on this one, and some of my neighbors are going to look pretty stupid if this has any political undertones. I’m dying to see how this turns out. May be time to attend a council meeting?
Nathan,”Do you think that just maybe they did not know they were sunflowers until they searched the house?”
Don’t you think that “just maybe” they should have made sure before they embarrassed a prominent citizen? I can think of a dozen ways they could have made sure….like looking at one of the offending plants. I know you conservatives are all for a police state, but it would be nice if the Gestapo would use reasonable care before they come kick your door down.
I’ve got to report my neighbor in Bel Aire to our police. He’s definitely got pot growing in the backyard. He’s even got them spaced and staked like tomato plants! And the guy has the gall to smoke it on his front porch. I never realized how much pot smells like tobacco. Definitely pot, though.
One of the most interesting aspects of our drug laws involves opium poppies. They’re illegal. Thing is, all poppies produce opium. The difference between opium poppies and the ones you grow in your flower bed is this; if you know they produce opium, they’re illegal and you’re busted. If you don’t know, they’re legal!
Sean, Pot does NOT smell like tobacco. If it smells like tobacco, it probably is and your neighbor probably rolls his own. If you don’t know what pot smells like, you probably don’t know what it looks like, either. If you turn your neighbor in and you’re wrong, you may get sued. If you’re right…..it was nice knowing you and your family. Ice Pick Charley will probably pay you a visit.
If your neighbor isn’t bothering you, maybe you should return the favor.
I think Sean was kidding, Snide.
Did you know that if you eat poppy seed muffins, you’ll have a positive drug screen? Something to keep in mind if your job requires random drug testing.