The Milton Police Department cracked jokes on Facebook about a marijuana citation on Tuesday, resulting in thousands of likes from Facebook users.
"For the public's information, hiding marijuana inside a cheeseburger will not keep our K9 from smelling it," a post on the department's Facebook read. "Our officers recovered a small bag of marijuana from a Wendy's Baconator yesterday after performing a traffic stop. Naturally the suspect's statement when the officers found the marijuana was 'I just got that burger they must have put it in there when I got it.' Wendys.com shows that marijuana is not a standard ingredient for a baconator."
Milton Patrolman Sean Beckett said officers approached a group of people over a "suspicious vehicle" near the Sheetz.
"I guess our officers had dealt with these people before," he said. "The employees in Sheetz thought they were a little sketchy. They were just acting kind of weird."
He said the man was cited for simple possession. The man had less than 15 grams of marijuana.
"We could have taken them to jail," he said. "It's a jailable offense, but with a little amount like that, a lot of times it's just a possession citation."
About 3,600 Facebook users had clicked "Like," "Love" or "Haha" in response to the post as of late Wednesday morning. Hundreds of comments were written, including both positive reaction and pro-legalization responses.
Beckett was taken aback by the online attention.
"There are some people that think we're wasting our time and tax dollars - that we should be going after the real drugs of heroin and meth," he said, "but marijuana is still illegal whether it's legal in our nation's capital or Colorado or Oregon. It's still illegal in West Virginia."
A Charleston Gazette review of drug arrests in 2014 found that for many years, marijuana arrests had made up the majority of drug arrests in West Virginia. According to an American Civil Liberties Union report, the state spent $17.4 million in police, judicial, legal and correctional expenses on marijuana possession arrests in 2010.