Article from Reason by Zuri Davis.

After six years in the natural medicine business, Green Angel CBD owner John Dee has faced an obstacle so large that he could be forced to close his doors: the New York Police Department’s 75th Precinct.

Over the weekend, Dee sent a 106-pound shipment of hemp flower from a Vermont farm via FedEx Freight. FedEx thought the $30,000 shipment might be pot, so it informed the Williston Police Department in Vermont. After investigating, the cops produced a police report showing that the company was a licensed hemp grower and that the hemp’s THC content was 0.06 percent, well within the legal limit.

The Williston police advised FedEx that it would not seize the shipment, and the hemp made its way to New York. There, a FedEx driver brought in the NYPD. As the Williston police noted, the shipment was clearly marked with the proper documentation. But the New York cops officers ignored the documentation, seized the shipment, and staged the seizure as a drug bust on social media.

 

Because the department is holding on to his shipment, Dee stands to lose a lot of money—and perhaps even his business. “This was our shipment,” he wrote on Instagram. “My brother was falsely arrested. Those bags were all hemp. All documents were in each box. The farm also called them to give them all there paperwork proving it’s all hemp! Please spread the word! We need to let people know we are not criminals.”

Read the entire article at Reason.

Image Credit: By Joi Ito (Flickr: NYPD Drills) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons