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Tuesday, March 03, 2009

Smelly flowers spark police raid

By Tracy Anderson

Police raided the home of an elderly couple in Bristol, England because a flowery plant in their garden smelled like pot.

Ivor and Margaret Wiltshire of Kingswood had just returned home from a holiday when they found their front door kicked in. The entire house and garage was searched.

The raid was apparently sparked by the smell of a tiny creeping flower called Moss Phlox that grew in their garden. The plant smells like and is often mistaken for pot.

This was the second time this happened. A similar incident occurred four days earlier to Ivor's neighbors David and Christine Difford.

The couple was visited by a gang wearing Halloween masks who demanded drugs.

"They shouted, 'Give us the weed, man' and searched the loft. It was frightening," David narrated.

Police later apologized to Ivor, a retired engineer, who showed them the smelly plant. The offending plant apparently didn't bother Ivor since he has no sense of smell.

"It is estimated that about four percent of the world's adult population (162 million) use cannabis annually and 0.6 percent (22.5 million) daily. The possession, use, or sale of psychoactive cannabis products became illegal in most parts of the world in the early 20th century. Since then, some countries have intensified the enforcement of cannabis prohibition while others have reduced the priority of enforcement," according to the editors of Wikipedia.

Moss Phlox, on the other hand, is scientifically known as Phlox stolonifera and is also called creeping phlox, flowering moss, ground pink, or moss pinks.

It is native to the eastern United States in forests in the Appalachian Mountains from Pennsylvania south to northern Georgia.

"We can't believe such a small plant has caused so much trouble," Ivor said.

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