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 When the first package arrived last month, the man threw it in the
garbage, Seattle police spokeswoman Detective Renee Witt said. But
on Monday, after another package reached his front door, he took it
to authorities.
Washington and Colorado became the first U.S. states to legalize
recreational pot in voter initiatives in 2012, and Washington law
allows people to possess up to an ounce (28 grams) of marijuana.
But shipping the drug through the U.S. Postal Service remains
illegal. The federal government classifies marijuana as an illegal
narcotic, although the Obama administration has issued guidelines
giving states new leeway to experiment with legalized cannabis.
Authorities said the pot mailed to the Seattle man's home came
marked "return to sender, insufficient postage," and had been
addressed to a business in Georgia. It listed the man's home as the
return address.
"Federally it (pot possession) is still considered a crime, so you
absolutely cannot under any circumstance send marijuana through the
mail," Witt said.
She said a similar incident happened about a year ago, when another
man brought in pot that had been sent to his address, listed as the
sender, citing insufficient postage. In both cases, police
documented the pot before destroying it.
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Witt said the two cases do not appear to indicate a broader problem
of people mailing pot from Washington state to states where
possession of the drug remains against the law.
"We don't see this very often," she said. "For us it's not something
we're worried about."
(Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Mohammad Zargham)
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