Source: montrealgazette.com
When is a pot plant not pot? When it’s hemp.
Five young men stopped by police early Wednesday with 350 suspicious plants in their van learned that what they thought were marijuana plants were in fact hemp, which has no intoxicating effects.
The five, age 18 to 27, were stopped by Sûreté du Québec officers at 12:30 a.m. on Chemin Yamaska, outside the Eastern Townships town of Farnham. The police were doing a random check when they came across the bags of green plants.
“Hemp looks like marijuana, but is a legal plant used for clothing, oil, hand cream,” said Aurélie Guindon of the SQ.
When police asked the men about the plants, they told the officers that they had just stolen them from a farm in East Farnham.
“The men saw it in a field, thought it was cannabis, came back at night with their minivan, cut it and put in their truck,” Guindon said.
The men, rather than being charged with possession of narcotics, will be charged with theft and receive a municipal fine of $200 for being on private property without the permission of the owner, a hemp farmer.
Two of the five arrested were detained because there was an arrest warrant for one and the other had priors.
asutherland@montrealgazette.com
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