Ping! My BS detector goes off on Hani A. Alkanani's "$900k Worth of Pot" Bust

So here's the news story from Cleveland's Journal Register, which Dennis mentioned in the ErieBlog's headlines page for 7/26:

Turnpike bust nets nearly $1 million in high-end pot
ALEX M. PARKER, Morning Journal Writer
07/26/2007

AMHERST -- The Ohio State Highway Patrol arrested a Pennsylvania man Tuesday on the Ohio Turnpike in Amherst for having nearly $1 million worth of marijuana in his car.

Hani A. Alkanani, 36, of Erie, Pa., was arrested after a trooper found 20 pounds of ''BC Bud marijuana,'' worth $900,000, in his Buick Century, according to the Highway Patrol.

The trooper searched his car using a drug-sniffing dog after he pulled Alkanani over near Amherst for speeding, according to the Highway Patrol.

After finding nearly 20 pounds of the marijuana, a potent form grown in Canada, Alkanani was arrested for possession of marijuana, a third-degree felony, the Highway Patrol said.

He is currently being held at the Lorain County Jail on a $10,000 bond.

He was arraigned yesterday in Oberlin Municipal Court and was assigned an attorney.

Ok, kids, get out your calculators for a lesson in the politics of Prohibition.

We start with 20 pounds of weed which is, admittedly, an awful lot of ganja.

But $900,000 dollars worth??? Total bullshit.

According to precedent in federal court (I think I read this on Erowid or NORML but don't quote me), the container weight of an illegal substance can be (read IS) factored into its overall weight for purposes of prosecution. That means if all the weed were in a plastic tote or a couple of canvas duffel bags, the weight of the container(s) would be considered part of the weight of the grass. Just for the sake of argument, though, let's say that the container weight doesn't subtract somewhere between 1-5 pounds and there really are 20 pounds of pot there.

20 lbs = 320 ounces

$900,000 / 320 oz = $2812.50/oz

That would price 1/8 oz baggies of this gold-plated sensi at a whopping $350 apiece. News flash for ya -- unless you're selling $50 joints to an undercover cop one at a time, IT AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN. Really, really expensive weed might cost you half to a third of that, if you were getting royally screwed in the pooper. Don't believe me? Check out the prices quoted on the White House's drug policy site. The data's a little stale -- 2001 -- but it's still a reality check.

At this point, you may be scratching your head a little. So again for the sake of argument, let's assume that since 2001 the price of BC Bud quoted on the ODCP site for Denver has doubled since 2001 from $500/oz to $1000/oz. That gives our 20 lb of grass a street value of, um, $320,000. Not exactly the "almost a million dollars worth of marijuana" we were talking about a minute ago, is it?

Let's face it, nobody's going to even question these numbers in public, except maybe Mr. Alkanani's publically-appointed defense attorney. They'll be used to lock up a guy driving a 1979 Buick Century (sounds like a real kingpin, huh?) for most of the rest of his life, spawn some job promotions and re-elections, and justify dumping even more money into the money pit known as the Drug War. And tomorrow your kid will still be able to pick up a dime bag on the lower East side just like he could yesterday -- supply unaffected, demand unaffected. Business as usual.