• Font Size    
E-mail

Close Window E-mail This Page

CU Student Gets Marijuana Back From Campus Police

Required fields are marked with an asterisk(*)

The information you provide will be used only to send the requested e-mail and will not be used to send any other e-mail communications. Read more in our Privacy Policy

Send E-mail

   Print     Share +
Sep 22, 2008 7:07 pm US/Mountain

CU Student Gets Marijuana Back From Campus Police

Reporting
Terry Jessup
DENVER (CBS4/AP) ― A University of Colorado at Boulder student who is a medical-marijuana cardholder had marijuana returned to him from campus police on Monday.

CU officials said student privacy laws kept them from discussing the case.

Edward Nicholson had threatened a lawsuit after he said campus police confiscated less than 2 ounces of pot from his dorm room.

Nicholson, 20, said he was holding the drug for his 23-year-old brother, a chronic-pain sufferer. State law allows marijuana to be used if recommended by a doctor for sufferers of debilitating medical conditions.

"A doctor prescribed it as medicine that would help him to live his daily life, and I just helped," Nicholson said.

Patients' caregivers must carry state-issued medical-marijuana cards. Nicholson is a cardholder, he said, because he says pot is easier to buy in Boulder than in Aurora, where his family lives.

"It's easier to get in Boulder, and it's also cheaper, and because it saves him some work," Nicholson said.

Nicholson said that after campus officers smelled pot coming from his dorm room last winter, campus authorities threatened to suspend him for a semester, to commit him to community service and drug and alcohol testing, and have him write a paper about the harmful effects of the drug on his schooling.

After Nicholson's lawyer Robert Corry threatened a lawsuit, CU officials abandoned the case.

"This is a victory for CU students. This is a victory for Colorado's medical marijuana patients," medical marijuana attorney Robert Corry said.

Nicholson now lives off campus.

CU officials revised their policies this fall to ban students from storing marijuana in their dorms, even if they are medical marijuana cardholders. However, first-year students can be released from the on-campus residency requirement if they are cardholders, said CU lawyer Jeremy Hueth.

There are 1,955 cardholders in Colorado, according to last year's statistics from the state health department.

Colorado Attorney General John Suthers said in response to the CU case that the medical-marijuana law has become a "front for widespread marijuana distribution."

"The proponents of these laws make them intentionally ambiguous, causing significant problems for law enforcement in Colorado and elsewhere," he said Friday.

(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

Weird News

You need the latest Flash player to view video content.
Click here to download.

Click here to bypass this detection if you already have the latest Flash Player.

Local News

Top News Stories

© MMIX, CBS Television Stations Inc. All Rights Reserved.