Case for Cannabis

A police raid of a popular “grow shop” that had been supplying cannabis-growing materials over the Internet, led the law enforcers to the house of their unsuspecting legal colleagues in Minden, in the state of North-Rhine Westphalia this week.

Officers discovered 12 marmalade jars filled with weed, harvested from a lush cannabis plantation at the house shared by a judge and a lawyer in the town. In addition, they seized growing equipment such as heat lamps and an air pump for the plants.

German states treat marijuana abuse with varying degrees of tolerance; it is illegal everywhere in the country, but police often react to the smell of the drug only if, for instance, a driver is suspected of consuming it. For the most part, German police are too stretched to control suspected plantations.

"We have to see what the investigations reveal," Ulrich Kaminski, press spokesman of the Justice Ministry in North-Rhine Westphalia told daily Mindener Tageblatt.

Police however have already opened a probe against the lawyer and the judge, who were traced from the grow shop's customer lists. Experts examined a laptop to find out the extent of the drug racket. They have already indicated that the legal duo wasn't just producing cannabis for their own consumption but seemed to be supplementing their legal incomes with the lucrative plantation.

It remains unclear whether the two legal eagles will defend themselves or hire lawyers in a case that is bound to grip the town's local media.