This week on Weird and Wacky Wednesdays we look at what the risks of joining a search party without all of the information may be. Then, we examine a more novel claim that a drug has medicinal properties and should not be illegal. Finally, we look at yet another of the harms caused by Facebook.
Follow the jump to read more of the weirdest and wackiest legal cases from around the globe!
Searching for Sense
Missing person cases can be very stressful and concerning. Mainly where those missing person cases involve people who have been drinking. That goes double when they’re out drinking in a rural area.
In Turkey, a search party was called together by police after a man who had been drinking in the wilderness with his friends went missing. They could not find him, despite their best efforts. The search party grew so big that people from neighbouring communities joined in.
It grew so big that the man heard about the search party and joined it to look for the missing person: himself. He was safely escorted by police back home, and, thankfully, it does not appear that he is facing charges for wasting police and the public’s time.
Medicinal Drugs
Look, I’m a big supporter of using controlled substances for their medicinal properties and easing restrictions on access to these substances where they can be helpful. But my support for this is based on science. I am unaware of any science that suggests, for example, that methamphetamine has medicinal properties.
But one man in Florida (you guessed it!) decided that medicinal meth was his best defence against a pending drug charge.
After being arrested for riding his bicycle without lights, police discovered an outstanding warrant out of Missouri. A search of the man revealed ten grams of meth and two pipes. When questioned, he advised police that it was for medicinal meth usage.
I’m not holding my breath about the outcome of that constitutional challenge.
Speaking of Meth
The Facebook outage this week probably saved a lot of people. Most of us thought that the absence of misinformation spreading about COVID-19, vaccines, and pizza shops probably kept at least one or two people from being sucked into these conspiracy theories.
But it probably kept a lot of people from being charged with crimes.
Take James Kertz, for example, who was arrested by police after using the Facebook marketplace. He posted an ad for a catalytic converter for sale (any criminal lawyer knows that’s already downright sus) and added a photo of the product.
In the background of the photograph was a large bag of meth and a syringe. This obviously got police even more interested, and they arrested him and searched his home based on the contents of the photo. The lesson here is to stay off Facebook, I guess.
