Uncle John's Presents Book of the Dumb 2 (20 page)

Despite all the public service announcements, some people continue to just say, “yes,” which is why we suppose this next chapter exists. Full of tales of self-inflicted wounds from the drug wars, the following stories are great examples of the perils of unclean living. So stay away from the drugs or run a reasonably good chance of showing up in a future edition of this book. We think that's enough motivation for anyone.

 

I
t all started when “Eddie” notified the Payson, Arizona, police
that he'd been robbed and thieves had taken his bag. There he was at a gas station, minding his own business, when all of a sudden he'd been pushed to the ground and robbed. Eddie was quite naturally worried about his bag.

Well, the good news was that the bag was found—another person found it in the nearby Safeway parking lot. For reasons of natural curiosity, and possibly to determine the identity of the owner, our good Samaritan opened the bag to see what was inside. He didn't find any personal identification, but he
did
find something else of passing interest: about $5,000 worth of methamphetamine. At which point our Samaritan thought that maybe the police might be interested in this little bag.

And, of course, they were. Once they had it in their possession, they brought in Eddie, who identified it as his bag. To which the police said, more or less, well, okay—and is the 100 grams of crank in the bag
also
yours? To which Eddie said something like “Oh,
that.
That's not
mine.
I was just
holding
it.”

Well, seems the police have a term for holding someone else's drugs; it's called
possession.
Which is what they charged Eddie with, as well as possession of drug paraphernalia. But what about the robbery? It turns out that it didn't happen—Eddie's bag wasn't stolen, he had just dropped it. We guess Eddie thought that if he reported it as stolen, the police would move on it quicker, and might not think to ask what was inside the bag. He was right about one of those.

Source:
The Payson RoundUp

 

H
ere's a funny thing about people who are enthusiastic about marijuana:
they sure like to
talk
about it a lot. Just ask them—and then try to get them to shut up. But when it comes time for action, they can be a bit lackadaisical. This may have something to do with their favorite herb, which does not exactly inspire a frenzied burst of activity; indeed, if it inspires any activity at all, it's usually 25 to 30 minutes of plucking at the same note on an out-of-tune guitar followed by the deeply introspective ingestion of two-thirds of a bag of Cheetos, followed by a nap.

Nevertheless, when British cannabis enthusiasts planned a festival of appreciation of and for Mary Jane at a park in Birmingham, police were on hand to handle the crowds. In Great Britain, pot has been downgraded to a Class C drug, which effectively means that you're no longer an automatic candidate for arrest. The police may look upon you with extreme disapproval and sniff haughtily at your knitted cap and Hacky Sack, but they won't arrest you. You would think this would encourage people to come out and celebrate their favorite smokable.

But let's remember that cannabis makes you mellow.
Really
mellow. Which may be why the attendance at the 2004 Birmingham cannabis festival was just one guy named Mark, who had come up from Chester. Not even the
organizers
showed up. The one guy who did show up noted to the BBC: “Cannabis users aren't the fastest starters, are they?” Apparently not. Maybe someone should have offered free Cheetos.

Source: BBC

 

W
hipping up highly illegal drugs
is usually an activity that most people try to hide. If the local police take an interest in your activities, it's unlikely that you'll turn a profit and avoid jail time.

This is why we're puzzled at the tactics of “Jed,” an alleged methamphetamine producer from Sarpy County, Nebraska. Jed wasn't actually out on the lawn, stirring up batches of meth, but he did something pretty close. He parked a 9,600 gallon tank of anhydrous ammonia out in front of his house, and snaked a hose from the tank into the house.

In addition to being very suspicious—anhydrous ammonia is used to make fertilizer, methamphetamines, and explosives—this substance is very dangerous. Spill a little bit of the stuff and you run the risk of caustic burns to your skin, eyes and other body tissue; breathe it in and you'll suffocate in relatively short order. No matter what you're up to with it, law enforcement is going to take a keen interest in the fact you have
a lot
of it around. So Jed's prominent ammonia display is certainly one of the dumbest things he could have done if he was trying not to get caught.

Jed's dumbness rewarded him with being hauled away on charges of meth possession and intent to sell, as well as possession of anhydrous ammonia, which was hauled away by a hazmat crew. Let's hope everyone in the neighborhood is breathing just a little bit easier.

Source:
TheOmahaChannel.com

 

W
e don't pretend to be experts in the practice
of smuggling drugs (and our mothers are grateful), but we hear things. And one of the things we hear is that there really is no good place on your body to smuggle them. Those customs people, they're not afraid to investigate in places you'd prefer they didn't. This was lost on “Brad,” who had it in his mind to smuggle 1.2 kilos of cocaine into Australia. His super-magnificent plan to elude the customs people and the drug-sniffing dogs: he'd hide that two and a half pounds of coke in his underwear.

Now, let's think about this. First, we're pretty sure that to pull this off, you'd have to wear briefs, because boxers are just a little too loose for this kind of transport work. Second: what sort of idiot thinks 1.2 kilos of powdered substance in your tighty whities
isn't
going to be noticeable? Try this at home: go to your pantry and take out two and a half pounds of powered sugar or flour. Now stuff it down your pants. Now try to walk. Waddle much? Think walking down an airport runway like you've got an extremely full adult diaper
wouldn't
be noticed?

So what happened to Brad? Well, he was caught, of course. Once he landed in Melbourne, the customs folks frisked him and found his kilo of cocaine contraband. If he was hoping the Aussie customs folks wouldn't pat him down
down under,
he was sadly mistaken.

Source:
Herald Sun
(Australia)

 

O
ne of the more unpleasant side effects of heavy pot
smoking, beside the weight gain from all those munchies, is a little thing called paranoia. Paranoia is no fun; thinking people are out to get you all the time dulls your ability to determine when people actually
are
out to get you.

With this in mind, lets us suggest that “Herb” seems to us to fit the model of a long-time toker, because his paranoia seemed to be fairly advanced—advanced enough for him to believe one night that he was being robbed. It was also advanced enough for him to call 911 and communicate this belief to the operator, who duly dispatched Bozeman, Montana, police to Herb's pad. Herb directed the police to his closet, where he claimed the robber had stuffed himself in an attempt to escape detection.

The police went to the closet. They didn't find any robber, which was good news for Herb. On the other hand, they couldn't help but notice the two marijuana plants in the closet. That was
not
good news for our friend Herb, because that meant Herb was then quickly arrested for felony manufacturing of dangerous drugs. How could Herb forget about the closet stash? Well, another side-effect of prolonged pot use: short-term memory loss.

So remember, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. Especially when you
help
them.

Source:
Daily Chronicle
(Bozeman, MT)

 

W
e could go into long and boring detail
to provide you with all the reasons why you should never do crack cocaine. But let's just cut to the chase—not only is crack an illegal substance, it also can render a person quite dumb.

Which brings us to “Betsy,” of Ashland, Ohio. Betsy apparently had a hankerin' for some crack, so she picked up a friend's cell phone and made a call. To whom was she making the call? Well, she wasn't quite sure—later tapes of the call (that's a hint) have her asking the people near her, “What number was I just calling?” Well, we don't know who she intended to call, but who she
did
call should have been obvious to her when the person on the other end of the line picked up the phone and said, by way of greeting, “Ontario Police.”

And yet, Betsy missed that. You ask, well, how can you miss someone actually
saying
“police?” Let's go back to our original thesis that
crack makes people stupid.
So not only did Betsy completely miss her phone partner's self-identification as a member of the law enforcement community, Betsy went on to have a chatty little conversation with the fellow before asking him, “Do you have 80?” meaning $80 worth of crack rocks. Our law enforcement professional, rather more on the conversational ball than Betsy, allowed that he might have. Betsy then asked if the stuff was good.

Our officer allows that the stuff he has is indeed good (you think he's going to say, “Nah, it's pretty bad”?), so Betsy arranges a pickup. She's so eager to settle the deal that when she's disconnected, she calls back, exhibiting the sort of focus one doesn't usually attribute to the strung out. The police get
her to admit she wants to buy crack and then they arrange to meet in the parking lot of a fast food joint.

There, the policemen found her and her friends and took them into custody. Betsy, “thinking” fast, proclaimed that she was just there for some food, but the $80 in her pocket—the agreed-upon amount for the deal—suggested otherwise. Betsy's response to the discovery of the exact sum of the drug deal in her pocket: well, that's not
my
money. Did we mention that
crack makes people stupid?

The final tally on Betsy's charges: felony soliciting (for asking the cops for crack), attempting to commit an offense, and disorderly conduct. All that could get you a year in the can. “It's the worst case of a misdialed phone number I've ever seen,” said one member of the Ontario police force. And one of the easiest drug busts they'll ever have.

Source:
ChannelCincinnati.com
,
NorthCentralOhio.com
,
Port Clinton News Journal
(OH)

 

M
eet “Hugo,” of Chalmette, Louisiana.
Hugo had a taste for the crack and had settled on a barter system to acquire some from his local dealers. He traded his microwave oven for a rock. But when he got home, he discovered that he'd been totally ripped off. There was a small rock of
something
in his crack pipe, but it wasn't made out of cocaine.

What to do? As you know, cocaine is illegal so it's not as if there's a customer service hotline one can call to complain about quality. Not only that, but now Hugo was down one microwave oven. So Hugo had a “brilliant” idea; he could call 911 and complain to the cops that someone had sold him bad crack.

And so Hugo invited the cops into his place, explained the situation, and asked them if they'd like to see the rock in question. Well, of
course
the cops wanted to see it. So Hugo offered it up for their observation, still lovingly cradled in the crack pipe. This is when the police arrested him for possession of drug paraphernalia. Maj. Marcel David, chief of the St. Bernard Parish Sheriff's special investigations division, noted that it was “the first I've heard of” a drug user allowing a cop to look at his drug paraphernalia.

The rock turned out, indeed, to be totally coke free. And that's good news for Hugo. Possession of drug paraphernalia is a misdemeanor. Drug possession is a lot more serious. Of course, what
really
stinks is that Hugo still doesn't have his microwave back.