A couple of Florida men busted in Oklahoma City recently for transporting a substantial amount of hash and various other legal cannabis products purchased in Colorado are now facing life in prison.
The Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics reports that a police officer felt the need to stop Robert Shepard and Andrew Mason last week because he believed they were driving too closely behind another vehicle. This, according to the Denver Westword, is one of many common shakedown tactics used by law enforcement in states that border Colorado — profile out of state license plates, establish a bogus traffic violation and then find a reason to rip their vehicle apart searching for marijuana.
Officers say while harassing the men, they noticed signs of nervousness, which is apparently probable cause for a search in Oklahoma. Soon a drug dog was unleashed and the fifty-pound discovery of marijuana oils, edibles and concentrates were made, with an estimated worth of $250,000.
Interestingly, these men were not actually smuggling hundreds of thousands of dollars of cannabis across the country, but they managed to rack up a cornucopia of felonies because police are using the street value of the products to charge them — nearly five times more than in the states where the items were legally purchased.
Reports indicate that the possession of hash and concentrates in the state of Oklahoma can cost a person a year in jail and a fine of $1,000. However, in the case of transporting with intent to sell, the potential sentence is far worse — two years to life. It is for this reason Shepard and Mason could be in serious trouble.
To make the entire situation exponentially worse, law enforcement officials are convinced that the marijuana-infused candies obtained in this bust are being manufactured for pushers to get kids hooked on dope. So, in addition to labeling Shepard and Mason drug traffickers, they have also made them poster children for the evil scourge that gets the youth of America hooked on drugs.
“It shows who these people are marketing this to, because you don’t put gummy bears out here and target 55-year-old men with this stuff,” said Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics spokesman Mark Woodward. “Teenagers are going to love this stuff. They’re going to flock to some of these products, because they could literally be eating these in class, in school, on the school bus, in a movie theater, at home, and parents would have no clue.”
