Only in America: Confusing cocaine and powdered lime
A man is falsely arrested on drug trafficking charges for carrying powdered lime — and more in our collection of strange revelations about the nation
A South Carolina man was falsely arrested and jailed for allegedly trafficking cocaine, after police discovered 1.5 pounds of powdered lime in his truck during a routine traffic stop. "I told them, 'That's lime. That's not cocaine. You can spread it out there on the ground,'" Lewis Thomas said. Thomas said officers were "so bent on me being a distributor" that they arrested him in spite of an inconclusive chemical test.
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Samantha Rollins is TheWeek.com's news editor. She has previously worked for The New York Times and TIME and is a graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.
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