ATHENS (Reuters) – A Greek Orthodox nunnery was turned into a marijuana plantation by two men posing as gardeners for elderly nuns, police said on Tuesday.

Acting on a tip-off, officers raided the nunnery in the village of Filiro, near the northern port city of Thessaloniki, and found more than 30 large cannabis plants in the enclosed garden.

“Two unknown men had told the two elderly nuns in the nunnery they would like to help them with the garden and then proceeded to plant the cannabis,” a police official told Reuters.

“The nuns did not know what they were and assumed they were large decorative plants,” he said.

Police did not arrest the nuns and have launched a hunt for the culprits.

KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. – A Montana man was arrested in Oregon’s Klamath County after a state trooper found nearly two pounds of marijuana wrapped as a Christmas present in the man’s car.

Oregon State Police said the trooper found about three pounds of marijuana and four firearms in Jimmie Cumbee’s car after a traffic stop Monday night on U.S. 97 about 10 miles south of Klamath Falls.

Cumbee, 42, was stopped for driving 75 mph in a 55 mph speed zone. He was traveling with his 17-year-old son, who also was arrested. Both are from Highwood, Mont., east of Great Falls.

Trooper Dave Chambers also found a marijuana pipe, and said that one of the four weapons was loaded and concealed in a box next to the driver’s seat.

Jimmie Cumbee is accused of unlawful manufacture, delivery and possession of a controlled substance, and carrying a concealed weapon.

RUMFORD, Maine – A man swiped a pot plant from the back of a pickup truck that was being used by an undercover state drug agent, leading to a chase and drug theft charges against a pair of men.

Travis Child of Peru and Jeremy Belskis of Rumford, both 20, were arrested Wednesday afternoon after the pursuit ended at Child and Sons Auto Sales. The arrest was made by two uniformed Rumford officers while the plainclothes agent stood by.

Child told the Sun Journal newspaper in Lewiston that they’d seen the pickup with marijuana plants in the back and that he hopped out of their car and swiped one of the plants at a stop sign. He said he just wanted “to know what it was.”

Child only managed to get part of one of the 4-foot-tall plants that had been seized earlier in the day, but the agent wasn’t going to let them get away with it, said Stephen McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety.

“It was blatant the way they did it. One of them jumped out of the car in plain view and broke off part of the plant,” he said.

The pickup gave chase and Child said they were initially fearful that they was being pursued by a drug dealer, not a law enforcement officer.

“It was a bad decision on our part,” Child said. “It was stupid.” Both of the men were released on cash bail.

EDINBURG, Texas – Firefighters who spent half an hour fighting a blaze in which 2,000 pounds of marijuana went up in smoke breathed so much of it that they would have failed a drug test, a fire chief said.

It took more than 35 firefighters, 1,000 gallons of water and five gallons of chemical suppressant to extinguish the warehouse blaze on Wednesday, Fire Chief Shawn Snider said.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were investigating the origin of the drugs. The Hidalgo County fire marshal was investigating whether arson was the cause.

Snider said Thursday the firefighters were exposed to so much marijuana smoke that they would not be able to pass a drug test, despite wearing air packs to prevent them from inhaling toxic or hazardous fumes.

MIAMI (Reuters) – An explosion set fire to a Miami house being used to grow marijuana hydroponically on Wednesday and the force of the blast sent the occupant flying into the yard, police said.

The man, identified by police as Edel Mesa, 40, was badly burned on the chest, arms and legs and was in critical condition at a trauma hospital, investigators said.

“The house was pretty much destroyed,” said Miami-Dade Police Detective Carlos Maura.

Firefighters extinguished the flames and called police, who seized more than 40 marijuana plants from the home, police said.

Arson investigators were trying to determine the cause of the explosion, but police said the man may have been using propane gas near the high-intensity lamps used to grow the plants indoors.

Police said Mesa was not immediately charged with a crime because of his injuries.

LONDON (Reuters) – A grandmother found guilty of growing and possessing cannabis on Wednesday vowed to keep using it in her cooking as a painkiller.

Patricia Tabram, 68, who lives near Hexham, was sentenced to 250 hours community service and ordered to pay 1,000 pounds of costs at Carlisle Crown Court.

“I’m still going to medicate with cannabis”, she said outside the court after sentencing. “This court is not fit for purpose.”

“I need it to keep me out of pain. I get five hours pain relief from one cup of hot chocolate with cannabis in,” she said.

Tabram, a campaigner for the medicinal use of cannabis, said she would appeal against the sentence.

She narrowly avoided a jail sentence two years ago after admitting possession of the drug in 2005.

Later that year she was arrested after police seized cannabis plants and cultivating equipment at her house.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. growers produce nearly $35 billion (18 billion pounds) worth of marijuana annually, making the illegal drug the country’s largest cash crop, bigger than corn and wheat combined, an advocate of medical marijuana use said in a study released on Monday.

The report, conducted by Jon Gettman, a public policy analyst and former head of the National Organisation for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, also concluded that five U.S. states produce more than $1 billion worth of marijuana apiece: California, Tennessee, Kentucky, Hawaii and Washington.

California’s production alone was about $13.8 billion, according to Gettman, who waged an unsuccessful six-year legal battle to force the government to remove marijuana from a list of drugs deemed to have no medical value.

Tom Riley, a spokesman for the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, said he could not confirm the report’s conclusions on the size of the country’s marijuana crop. But he said the government estimated overall U.S. illegal drug use at $200 billion annually.

Gettman’s figures were based on several government reports between 2002 and 2005 estimating the United States produced more than 10,000 metric tons of marijuana annually.

He calculated the producer price per pound of marijuana at $1,606 based on national survey data showing retail prices of between $2,400 and $3,000 between 2001 and 2005.

The total value of 10,000 metric tons of marijuana at $1,606 per pound would be $35.8 billion.

By comparison, the United States produced an average of nearly $23.3 billion worth of corn annually from 2003 to 2005, $17.6 billion worth of soybeans, $12.2 billion worth of hay, nearly $11.1 billion worth of vegetables and $7.4 billion worth of wheat, the report said.

Gettman said the 10-fold increase in U.S. marijuana production, from 1,000 metric tons in 1981 to 10,000 metric tons in 2006, showed the country was failing to control marijuana by making its cultivation and use illegal.

“Marijuana has become a pervasive and ineradicable part of the economy of the United States,” he said. “The contribution of this market to the nation’s gross domestic product is overlooked in the debate over effective control.”

“Like all profitable agricultural crops marijuana adds resources and value to the economy,” he added. “The focus of public policy should be how to effectively control this market through regulation and taxation in order to achieve immediate and realistic goals, such as reducing teenage access.”

Riley said illegal drug use was a “serious part of the economy,” but he rejected the notion of an economic argument for legalizing marijuana.

He said marijuana use was an “inherently harmful activity” with serious physical and mental health consequences. He said more American teens were in treatment centres for marijuana dependency than for all other drugs combined.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court said on Friday it would decide whether a high school principal violated a student’s free-speech rights by suspending him for unfurling a banner that read “Bong Hits 4 Jesus”.

Student Joseph Frederick says the banner’s language was designed to be meaningless and funny in an effort to get on television as the Winter Olympic torch relay passed by the school in Juneau, Alaska, in January 2002.

But school officials say the phrase “bong hits” refers to smoking marijuana. Principal Deborah Morse suspended Frederick for 10 days because she said the banner advocates or promotes illegal drug use in violation of school policy.

Frederick, 18, had been standing on a public sidewalk across the street from the school when Morse grabbed his banner and crumpled it. Students had been allowed to skip class to watch the relay.

Frederick sued and sought the removal of the suspension from his records, a declaration that his rights had been violated and monetary damages.

A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit, but a U.S. appeals court ruled for Frederick and said the principal can be held liable for damages.

“A school cannot censor or punish students’ speech merely because the students advocate a position contrary to government policy,” the appeals court said.

The principal and the Juneau School Board appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that the U.S. Constitution’s free-speech guarantee still allows public schools to bar students from displaying messages promoting use of illegal substances.

Kenneth Starr, the former special prosecutor who investigated ex-President
Bill Clinton over the Whitewater land deal and the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal, brought the appeal to the high court.

“This case raises an issue of vital importance to every school principal and administrator in the country,” said Starr, now dean at the Pepperdine Law School in California.

Frederick’s lawyer, Douglas Mertz, said schools cannot punish students for displaying messages off school property at events that are not sponsored or supervised by the school.

He said the school admitted that Frederick did not disrupt or interfere with any school activities.

The Supreme Court is expected to hear arguments in the case at the end of February, with a decision due by June.

TORONTO (Reuters) – A Canadian police search for marijuana grow operations mushroomed as officers discovered 22 units in a Toronto high rise were being used to cultivate the illegal drug, four times more than expected.

“It was quite shocking to us that there would be (22) in one particular apartment building,” Toronto police Det. Sgt. David Malcolm told a news conference on Friday.

Police found over 6,000 marijuana plants worth an estimated street value of over C$6.0 million ($5.31 million) scattered throughout the 22 apartments in the north Toronto building.

Media reports said police were originally alerted to the marijuana operations last April when a fire broke out in one of the units. Malcolm declined to specify what tipped off police.

Armed with search warrants for just five apartments in the 13-storey high rise, police discovered they had just scratched the surface.

“This is a huge public safety issue to other tenants in this building based on the use of electricity, and the threat of fire,” Campbell said.

“The damage to some of those units is extensive, not to mention the chemicals being poured down the drain system.”

Three men have been charged with various offenses including possession and production of marijuana and police say they expect to make more arrests.

In 2004, police raided an abandoned brewery near the Ontario city of Barrie which had 30,000 marijuana plants in what was called the biggest growing operation in Canadian history.

Police said the operation was the size of a football field, a street value of C$30 million ($26.55 million).

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – A plan to roll and smoke the world’s largest joint was cancelled at short notice in Amsterdam when the organizers realized they could be breaking the law.

“We have now read the small print and realize there could be problems,” Thijs Verheij, one of the organizers, was quoted as saying by ANP news agency after consulting Dutch drugs laws.

The group had wanted to roll a five-foot-long pure-weed joint, stuffed with more than a pound of marijuana and containing no tobacco, and smoke it in a bar.

It had initially thought the attempt would be legal if 100 people each brought along the five grams of the drug tolerated by Dutch authorities for personal use.

“Unfortunately it looks like this will not be possible,” Verheij said. The attempt had been planned for Wednesday.

A police spokesman said: “We would definitely have investigated this. If you make a single joint with half a kilo of cannabis in it, it would cross the line.”

Verheij said the group had hoped to beat a record set with a joint containing 100 grams of marijuana.

NEW YORK – A detective suspended after testing positive for drugs says his wife served him meatballs spiked with marijuana because she wanted to keep him out of harm’s way by forcing him into retirement.

An administrative judge believed him, and recommended this week that Anthony Chiofalo be reinstated.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly has yet to decide what to do.

“We can’t comment because the matter will still come before the police commissioner for a final determination,” said spokesman Paul Browne.

Chiofalo, a 22-year-veteran assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force, was suspended without pay last year after a random drug test found marijuana in his system. The officer denied ever using drugs and demanded a hearing.

During an investigation, his wife said she had substituted marijuana for oregano in her meatball recipe in hopes of forcing him to leave police work.

The detective’s lawyers also presented evidence that she had passed a lie-detector test, and offered testimony from a toxicologist that the excuse was valid.