$700 fine for a single stick of weed!

Seven hundred dollars for a stick of weed seems like a pretty drastic penalty but that’s what thirty year old Albert Chaparro, a painter of Neal Penn Road, must pay between now and September fourteenth or he will spend seven months behind bars. That court ruling followed Chaparro’s guilty plea this morning before Magistrate Aretha Ford for possession of one point three grams of cannabis. Chaparro was busted just before eleven last night by a mobile patrol on Boots Crescent in the Port Loyola area of Belize City. Before receiving his punishment, Chaparro asked for leniency because this is his first offence and because he uses the drug along with other types of medication to ease the pain from a bullet wound he suffered while working as a security officer. Magistrate Ford advised Chaparro to desist from using marijuana as medication since it is illegal and advised him to seek professional medical assistance to treat his wound.