House Bill Harvests Convictions For Seeds, Stems

What are we paying the police for? For one thing, picking seeds and stems out of marijuana so drug dealers and users might get lesser sentences.

Does that tick you off? Well, the cops aren’t too happy about it, either.

Under current Virginia law, marijuana seeds and stems don’t count toward the legal weight of the drug confiscated by police. That means that police have to sift through marijuana with heavy-gauge steel screens to purify it, a time-consuming process that can take hours.

It can also mean the difference between a felony or misdemeanor for suspects charged with possession or distribution of marijuana if the drug weighs about a half-ounce before the seeds and stems are taken out.

Del. Donald McEachin, D-Henrico County, introduced a bill in last year’s General Assembly to include seeds and stems in the legal definition of marijuana. That bill passed the House but stalled in the Senate amid questions of increasing costs to localities for incarcerating more drug prisoners, but McEachin plans to introduce a revamped version of the bill this year.

McEachin says his concern is that the law gives marijuana users an unfair advantage over users of other drugs such as cocaine, which are weighed without considering impurities. He compares it to the stiffer federal sentences for crack cocaine vs. powder cocaine, which some have charged amounts to racism.

Henrico Police Investigator Stokes McCune, who has demonstrated the marijuana-sifting process for the General Assembly, says if a marijuana dealer sells five pounds of marijuana to a customer seeds and all, then they should be charged for possessing or selling the same amount.

As for sifting the seeds and stems, McCune says, “It’s just a tedious process that the guys have to go through and it doesn’t do anybody any good except the guy who’s caught with the dope.”

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