A Neighborhood Goes to Pot

For weeks the area's residents had known that something odd was in the air. But they could not quite put their finger on it. Last week District of Columbia police did.

"The neighbors smelled it," explained a police officer, "and thought it was some kind of gas coming up through the chimney. So they called the gas company. The gasmen went there but couldn't figure out what it was. They called the fire department. The firemen couldn't figure it out. So they called us. We came out and said, 'We know what it is.' "

Police showed up at a brick duplex at 5306 Nevada Avenue, in the affluent Chevy Chase suburb of Washington. Inside were 151 Ibs. of marijuana, worth about $500,000, stashed in 16 boxes. No one was home, but someone planning a drug sale had been stripping the marijuana leaves and burning the relatively valueless stalks in the fireplace. Later, three men and two women, all in their 20s, who had been living in the rented duplex for about a month, surrendered. Their cache, police said, was as first-rate as the $150,000 and $200,000 homes in the neighborhood. Said a police officer: "It was really good stuff."