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Georgia guy had ganja on his mind

EDWARDS — Big Brown doesn’t ship green.

Folks at the UPS store in Edwards smelled something suspiciously like marijuana coming from a package that was supposed to contain only a computer hard drive.

The box weighed about two pounds and was supposed to be shipped to Cumming, Georgia. The same name and address were in both the “To” and “From” labels on the package.



This is not the UPS shop’s first reefer rodeo, so employees asked Georgia Boy if he wanted them to crack open the package and throw away anything that wasn’t supposed to be shipped, you know, like pot out of Colorado, where it’s legal, to Georgia, where it isn’t.

Because Georgia Boy is Southern, he was very polite about it and replied something like, “No thank you.”

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Because communication is sometimes inexact, a store employee thought Georgia Boy agreed to having his package opened, so she did.

The employee spotted the pot and called first, the UPS corporate overlords, then the Eagle County Sheriff’s Office.

Deputy David Dempsey swung by the UPS store and picked up the package.

While attending to other business, Deputy Dempsey hauled the package around in his patrol vehicle for a couple hours.

Dempsey’s vehicle was sealed up, and the vehicle soon reeked of reefer.

So Dempsey got Georgia Boy on the phone and asked permission to crack open the box. He found packages of coffee from Vail Mountain Coffee Roasters, buffalo jerky, several retail packaged marijuana products including hash oil, a couple of seven-gram packages labeled “Gorilla Glue,” and eight individually wrapped THC toffees.

Georgia Boy asked the deputy, “Would you ship it to me?”

Why no, Dempsey replied, he would not; even though Sheriff’s uniforms tend to be brown, they’re not the same shade of brown that adorns UPS drivers.

Deputy Dempsey reminded Georgia Boy that pot remains illegal in Georgia at both the state and federal levels, and transporting it over state lines is a felony.

Georgia Boy was apologetic, and gave Deputy Dempsey permission to either destroy the ganja goodies or use them for training drug detection dogs. Deputy Dempsey opted for the latter.

Georgia Boy has no prior criminal record, and wasn’t charged for wandering away from reality this time.

Staff Writer Randy Wyrick can be reached at 970-748-2935 or rwyrick@vaildaily.com.


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