If It Quacks Like a Duck...

I don't usually spend too much time perusing the drug-related arrests at the US border, but the story written by Robyn Doolittle for TheStar.com was simply too enticing to pass up.

On September 11, 2008, Ron Obadia and his partner, Nadine Artemis, experienced the kind of déjà vu with US CBP typically only associated with learning your name is a dead ringer for someone on TSA's no-fly list. Just a few months earlier, on August 3, 2008, US CBP arrested the couple when a test of their raw chocolate bars indicated the bars could actually be hashish. The bars were not hashish. They really were just raw chocolate bars. Ron Obadia and Nadine Artemis run Living Libations, a natural food and natural beauty care company. Living Libations makes and sells the raw chocolate bars. Following the August 3, 2008 arrest, Children's Aid Society came to their home after being tipped off by the arresting officer that the couple were suspected of being major drug dealers based on the discovery of two bricks of hashish in their diaper bag. After submitting a sample of the raw chocolate to testing by Canada's Welfare Justice Department, Mr. Obadia and Ms. Artemis were completely exonerated of all charges associated with the August 3rd arrest.

One might ask why the couple would risk carrying the same raw chocolate bars back through a US Customs checkpoint. Selling this chocolate is an important source of income for the family. The point of the September 11, 2008 trip was to bring Living Libations' wares to the Raw Spirit Festival in Sedona, Arizona. The couple took extreme precautions:

Mr. Obadia and Ms. Artemis retained a top customs and immigration lawyer to notify the officials and smooth the way for their subsequent trip across the border. The lawyer traveled ahead, assuring that their exoneration files where duly noted in US border computers, and to notifying Customs Superintendents that Mr. Obadia and Ms. Artemis were going to venture across the border, with forensic certification in hand, and prepared for any questions, or FDA searches. Despite such top-level coordination, US Border Patrol re-arrested and re-interrogated the[m.]

The above paragraph is an excerpt from an October 8, 2008 press release, which truly details the couple's ordeal much more fully than your typical press release or blog posting.

Despite the precautions, which, in addition to the above, included hand-carriage and production of a letter from the Canada Department of Justice to CBP, the couple were arrested again on September 11. First, a drug-sniffing dog indicated on the raw chocolate bars. Then, CBP administered an NIK marijuana kit, which, while unreliable enough to be inadmissible as evidence in court, was relied upon by CBP to support the probable cause for the second arrest. An interesting reenactment of the administration of an NIK marijuana kit is available here.

I can accept that NIK marijuana kits are unreliable. However, the ingredients of the raw chocolate bars are "unrefined, unprocessed cacao, maca root, hemp seeds and goji berries." Hemp seeds come from plants of the genus Cannabis. Hashish comes from plants of the genus Cannabis. I am by no means a drug expert, but isn't it rational to conclude that the dog and NIK marijuana kit indicated a presence of cannabis because the raw chocolate bars contain a nonintoxicating cannabis ingredient?