Shocking! Willie Nelson Busted for Pot

FYI | Humor | Older | Wiser

This just in: Willie Nelson likes his herb.

The country outlaw is back on the road again after a pot-powered pitstop early Monday.

Nelson and several of his band mates received misdemeanor citations for marijuana possession after their tour bus was pulled over in Louisiana. The bust came just two days after Nelson called for the decriminalization of marijuana while stumping for Texas gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman.

According to Willie Williams of the Louisiana Highway Patrol, Nelson and crew were traveling along Highway 10 in St. Martin Parish, Louisiana, when they were stopped for a routine commercial inspection. Officers on the scene caught a whiff of something suspicious emanating from the vehicle as soon as the driver opened the door. And BioWillie be damned, a search of the bus turned up about one-and-a-half pounds of marijuana and a small bag of psychedelic mushrooms estimated at two-tenths of a pound.

"No one aboard the bus gave any of our troopers any problems," Williams told E! Online. "When the search was conducted , they were very cordial and...subsequently admitted to being the owners of the narcotics."

Williams stressed that the group did not receive any preferential treatment from troopers. The reason Nelson and his band members were not taken into custody and issued the citations, Williams said, was because the St. Martin Parish jail was "filled to capacity." It will be up to the county district attorney to decide whether the musicians will be called to court.

Aside from the 73-year-old ringleader, citations were issued to his sister, Bobbie Nelson, 75, of Briarcliff, Texas;Tony Sizemore, 59, of St. Cloud, Florida;Gates Moore, 54, from Austin; and David Anderson, 50, of Dallas.

If convicted, they could each face up to six months in jail--most likely they'd get off with probation and fines.

Nelson's publicist, Elaine Shock, declined to comment.

Before the bust, the Farm Aid founder and his band were in his native Texas to headline Saturday's Austin City Limits Music Festival. During the stop there, Nelson gave an interview in which he urged politicians to scrap criminal penalties for pot possession.

Those sentiments echoed the platform of his pal Friedman, a singer-songwriter turned politician who's mounting an independent bid for Texas governor and has called on the decriminalization of marijuana to help clear clogged state prisons of nonviolent offenders. Nelson has actively supported Friedman's candidacy, hosting a $1,000-per-plate fundraising dinner and signing a petition to get Friedman on the ballot.

"The hundred times that Kinky and I have talked during his campaign--we talked about energy, health, biodiesel, immigration, war--and the pot thing has never come up. Of course, I felt always that I knew where Kinky stood on that, and he knew where I stood, but I also knew that it was very risky to bring that out politically, but what’s Kinky got to lose?" Nelson said.

Aside from fighting for his write to toke, Nelson has been pushing for greener fuel (and has opened a chain of BioWillie diesel stations) and petitioning Congress to pass a bill banning the industrial slaughter of wild horses to sell as meat to consumers abroad.

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