Police in St. Louis discovered a marijuana lab in a house. Yes, a “marijuana growth lab,” was in the basement.
Todd and Angela Priest have been charged with child endangerment.
The Priests knowingly allowed the children to enter the house from Feb. 1 through 12, according to court documents.
How dare they let their four kids, aged 2 through 14, enter the house! They should have made them sleep in the alley. After all, there was a drug lab in the basement and they were in the same house with things like water and light and plant food.
[Via Toke of the Town
I was an asthmatic kid, allergic to everything, but loved the smell of cigarette smoke. Go figure. Loved it when my smoker aunt came over. She was even allowed to use an ashtray, unlike today where the smokers must go hide under the bridge to smoke their awesome neat and cool cigarettes.
A growth lab? Sounds like they are trying to make it sound like a meth lab. Unbelievable the lengths folks go to.
What about the kids? Who will save them? Never fear mommygov is here!
I look forward to the day the Future Farmers of America have classes for cannabis growing techniques in high schools.
Well, I guess they saved those children…. They probably “saved” them from a safe and loving home, took them from the familiarity of their parents and placed them in the nurturing arms of the state foster care system. An overburdened system where they will be moved into a house full of strangers, and taken from placement to placement, so they never need worry about the nuisance of permanance, predictability or lasting relationships. It’s society’s training program for the prison system, don’t you know. Take it from me, I’m a retired psychologist with over twenty years experience working with kids in the foster system. The plants were the LEAST of their worries.
These days, officialdom charges you with everything they can think of when you are in trouble, especially if you have kids. It is monstrous, really. There’s no way the plants were endangering the kids, and trying to take the kids away from the family…that’s just about as serious as it gets.
I’m surprised more people don’t show up at court for this sort of thing, guns blazing.
Everything these days is also a felony. That airline steward who cursed out the passenger then opened the chute and slid to the tarmac has been charged with some sort of felony.
That’s right–a felony! This man was so wicked to have opened a chute and slid out of the plane that he needs to spend years in prison, be deprived of voting rights and subject to all kinds of supervision and hassles because he dared to go down the chute.
Conrad Black is right–America is a carceration state.
Oh FFS !! I was in that same situation !! My parents were growing those toxic plants too!! They smelled green like pine trees…oh the horror!!! No wonder Im a loser …
Wait a minute..I have a good job, pay my bills, even went to college…hold on a second , these people are liars…these plants didnt do one bit of harm to me!!!
BASTARDS !!
DARKCYCLE : I agree with your post , most parents that consume cannabis ARE loving people and these kids will probably end up in a abusive foster home or be shuffled around like tokens in a casino(after all foster parents make money doing this).
The police should have thrown a flashbang through the window then stormed the premises, guns drawn, ready to shoot humans and animals at the slightest provocation. You know, to keep the kids safe.
I know you can make bombs out of fertilizer but a dangerous Cannabis Growth Lab? Seriously?
Did these parents have a clean room set up where they where doing genetic splices from the mother plant? Where they experimenting with DNA recombination techniques to get a cleaner buzz? Attempting to clone hybrids of Cannabis and Poison Oak? WTF?
hasn’t anyone seen “day of the triffids?” one wrong DNA tweak in that “lab” and the next thing you know the plants are eating the kids.
hmmmm, i may have a movie idea from all of this: monstrous “frankenweed” eating children — there has to be box office gold in that!
One thing I’ve noticed is that the know nothings seem to think that anyone who tries cannabis promptly gets high 24/7/365 and goes out driving at every opportunity. It’s amazing that people can be so ignorant, and still feel qualified to shout their ignorance as if it were truth. Gosh, anyone who still believes that cannabis as medicine is some manner of fraud had to have suffered from a lack of oxygen in the birth canal.
How about a list of authorities that have recognized cannabis as medicine? I’m going to exclude the States that had their voters ‘scammed’ by the potheads even though it’s stupid to claim that amotivational couch potatoes could tear themselves away from the Cheetos long enough to scam tens of millions of voters.
The countries of Israel, Holland, and Canada have recognized that cannabis is medicine. All 3 countries governments supply it directly to patients.
The legislature of Rhode Island passed a law allowing medical cannabis, and overruled the Governor’s veto to do so. No regrets there, they subsequently voted to make dispensaries legal, and again overruled the Governor’s veto.
New Mexico’s legislature passed a medical cannabis law with the support of their Governor.
The Boards of Pharmacy of Oregon and Iowa this year recognized cannabis as medicine. Iowa’s board voted 6-0. The interesting thing about the Iowa Board’s unanimous vote was that they had to be sued and ordered by the Court to do the study. Carl Olsen had petitioned them to consider cannabis as medicine and they poo-poo’d the idea of even studying it. He sued and got the Court order. I almost dropped dead from shock when I heard that they reversed themselves rather than just rubber stamping their first impression. Did I mention that the vote was unanimous? That tells me that the proof is there and simply undeniable.
The American Medical Association this year recommended that cannabis be moved to schedule 2.
The British Medical Association as well as the California Medical Association recognize that cannabis is medicine. Yes, the CMA is the local branch of the AMA but they have recognized cannabis as medicine for a number of years.
The International Cannabinoid Research Society members aren’t a bunch of whacked out hippy alternative medical practitioners. I think it notable that Dr Donald Tashkin is a member.
Bayer Pharmaceuticals has made a substantial investment in GW Pharmaceuticals. Most people reading this already know that GW Pharmaceutical’s entire existence is to make whole plant cannabis compounds and sell them to sick people by prescription. Oh well, one of the nice things about the ignorance of the masses in this case is that GWP’s stock is cheap. The $10,000 I’ve invested in their stock will make a substantial contribution to my retirement after the idiots are proven incorrect. Steenkin’ filthy rich is really not out of the question. I’ve put my money where my mouth is. Yes, it’s annoying to be one of Andrea Barthwell’s employer but I’ll get over that. http://blogs.salon.com/0002762/stories/2005/04/20/andreaBarthwellSnakeOilSal.html
Really, there’s no question at all anymore that the evidence proves that the endo-cannabinoid system is an integral part of keeping human beings healthy and happy. The first couple of days after giving birth mom’s breast milk is lousy with endo-cannabinoids. I wonder how religionists can reconcile the fact that the first thing that their magic god gives us after birth is a boatload of cannabinoids. Oh right, they’re clueless about the facts.
I forgot to mention that my screed above is a shameless appeal to authority argument, as it was intended when written.
I can also do a shameless appeal to the majority by pointing out that recent polls show 75-80% of the people in the US recognize cannabis as medicine.
Yeah….uh…me too.
By the time some of the younger children in the raided family reach adulthood, marijuana may very well be legal in St. Louis County, Illinois.
Remaining in the family members’ delicate minds will be the terrible trauma of being ripped out of their parents’ arms and made wards of a decrepit and corrupt state. Not because growing marijuana plants poses any physical danger to children, but most likely because some dimwitted county employee perceived a moral threat to the minors.
The trauma delivered by raids that break up families is lasting. Just ask any Holocaust survivor. Fascist brutalities of that time had a negative, generational ripple effect on people’s mental health that lasted for up to three generations afterward.
The possibility that the Illinois statute of limitations will be flexible enough to allow the Priest children to sue St. Louis County for allowing them to be abused by self sanctified sadomoralists is very real. I wish the family well as it embarks upon its quest for justice.
The two people charged were not the parents of the children.
They were charged with child endangerment, but no drug charges.
They are each facing a maximum of 4 months in jail for all charges combined.
“After all, there was a drug lab in the basement and they were in the same house with things like water and light and plant food.”
Don’t forget dirt, Pete. Dirty, dirty, dirt. Dirrrt!
I grew up in a house with paint and butane in the shed and could have ended up with a serious inhalant abuse problem!
I grew up on farms and ranches with all types of chemicals and unknown substances around me,never saw anyone arrested for any of them,and this was when chicken scratch(special feed for increasing egg production)had meth in it. And not the garbage they call meth today,but the good stuff.
I still remember some of the cowboys mixing a spoonful of scratch in their coffee and straining it through their kerchief before drinking it. They told me it gave it a good flavor. Since I was too young for coffee I never thought about it until it was too late and they had already removed it from the feed.
That’s like one of my aunts and her poppy and chamomile tea. It wasn’t till years later that i clued in to what her tea really was and why I couldn’t have any. 😛
You know, I don’t think anything will ever stop humans from using substances. They could lock us all up and yet we’d still figure out something.
Is there even a society / culture / peoples who have never used anything? Never invented some type of alcohol and/or never figured out which plants in their area produced some sort of desired mind altering or physical effect when eaten/smoked/drank/etc? The only culture I can think of could be the Inuit, but I think even they managed to come up with some sort of fermented beverage for a rare occasion.
Locking us up would make us more likely to use drugs!
One more detail; based on the subsection they were charged with, the child endangerment charges are for carrying out drug deals with children on the house, not for growing pot with children in the house.
I grew up in a small house with a big family and an alcoholic stepfather who beat my mom every weekend. He wasted his paycheck every weekend on booze and women, then came home about 2 am and around then, we’d all hear my mom start screaming, run down stairs, and find them going at it in the kitchen. He was a brutal, savage, violent drunk who acted possessed by some kind of demon. We had to pile on him to keep him from abusing my mother.
After about 10 years of this nonstop madness (and about half a dozen automobiles), he finally was permitted to seek help and started attending AA meetings, where a bunch of abusive dads like him all sat around drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes and telling their personal stories.
Whenever I remember him, I always recall the two most noteworthy acts of drunkenness he displayed: Once, during his usual drunken escapades, after the usual fight in the kitchen, while he steadied himself against the door to keep himself from falling over, he pointed accusingly at my oldest brother and exclaimed, “He smokes marijuana!” as if it were the very worst crime anyone in the universe could possibly commit. I had to laugh. The irony was overwhelming.
The other noteworthy episode was when he got in an auto accident on the highway not more than a mile from home, walked into the kitchen all bloody and somewhat more sober (due to the accident), and simply told my mom that he wrecked the car and went to the bathroom to clean off. The funny thing was he had cuts and blood all over his arms and his head and he acted like it was just another day, no big thing. As near as I recall, no cops or medics were involved and he simply walked home from the scene without bothering to wait for anyone.
Yep, alcohol is so much safer for everyone, including the kids. It’s a good thing the goobers decided to go after cannabis users.
I’m not sure I’m reading correctly, are you denigrating AA in the post above? Yes, it’s just a religious talisman but there are a significant number of out of control degenerate addicts that use that talisman to clean up their acts and become human again. It doesn’t work for everyone, I don’t actually think it works for more than about 10% of the degenerate addicts but in my awareness it is the most successful program for degenerate addicts that want to turn their lives around. If it didn’t work for your dad that’s sad, but still no reason to indict the program. Someday someone will come up with an actual program based on factual evidence that will supplant it, but as of today the religious talisman of the 12 step programs is the most effective method. There’s even a cannabis dispensary in Oakland that sponsor’s a 12 step program for degenerate addicts that need medical cannabis because there just aren’t any that accept that using cannabis is possible in recovery. Frankly there are a lot of degenerate addicts not practicing their addictions because they use cannabis to mitigate their urges. It certainly helps me.
Duncan, you’re just too smart for your own good. Lighten up a little and face the reality that everyone isn’t as completely serious about knit-picking all of the details of every comment and post as you are.
No, I wasn’t denigrating AA. I was simply pointing out how alcoholics were handled by our benevolent society as compared to cannabis users. So sorry for not explaining myself better.
SERIOUSLY? That 2 year old boy from Indonesia who smokes forty cigarettes is OUT OF HIS MIND. Someone needs to kick his parents in the head, or just throw them into the ocean I saw the video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TOtoVEJSTU
Marijuana “lab”. Really? LAB? How about “garden”. This is proof that the war on drugs is built upon a heap of propaganda and lies. It’s “success” (measured by the fact that America has more people in prison than any other country on the planet — per capita and in actual numbers as well) is directly proportional to the level of ignorance in our society.