County Pays Medical Marijuana User $2,000 for New Lamps Following Acquittal

BYLINE: Josh Farley

Kitsap County, WA

Kitsap County cut a $2,000 check Thursday to a medical marijuana user whose lamps for growing pot were destroyed by county officials. Bruce Olson, 55, was acquitted by a jury in March of illegally growing and selling pot. He went to the sheriff's office this month — two years after his South Kitsap home was raided by county investigators — in an attempt to get some of his property back, according to Sheriff's Office spokesman Scott Wilson.

Olson got his paraphernalia and video surveillance equipment back, as ordered by Kitsap County Superior Court, Wilson said. His ballasts, lights and bulbs for growing the marijuana, however, had been destroyed because of lack of space in the county's evidence room, he added, and so the county agreed to compensate him for the loss. The sheriff's office would not return the marijuana it confiscated, however, because, Wilson said, "we don't know how much he may already have."

State law limits medical marijuana users to a 60-day supply.

Wilson added that the marijuana had grown old and moldy in the evidence room. "It would be unfit for consumption," he said. Olson's acquittal on the grounds he was a medical marijuana user was the first Wilson can recall. "We've never had a situation where we've had to give it back to them," he said of the property.

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