If you’re going to come up with an scapegoat smell to cover your tracks, perhaps choosing the familiar fragrant, salty scent of McDonald’s french fries isn’t the best choice. That odor is basically ingrained in the collective conscious of the country by now, after all. Oh, and cops know what marijuana smells like, so there’s that.

A 20-year-old Florida man was allegedly hotboxing in the parking lot of a McDonald’s when a police officer happened to come upon the car parked in the drive-thru’s waiting spot, reports NWF Daily News. When the officer approached the vehicle, the man started to back the car out. The cop gave a little tap-tap on the rear passenger door and the car stopped. Ruh roh.

That’s when the scent of marijuana wafted to this savvy cop’s nostrils, and so he asked the woman driver and her passenger, the suspect, if they happened to be partaking in such a drug.

Apparently they told him something along the lines of, “Nope, it’s just us in here smelling some tasty french fries.” That didn’t fly, and the officer asked to search the car.

The cop found what appeared to be marijuana on the floor in front of the passenger seat and searched the man as well, discovering a small plastic bag “containing a green, leafy substance.” Oregano? Nope, the man admitted he’d been smoking reefer and pointed at a joint on the ground. That’ll do it.

The man was charged with possession less than 20 grams. No word on whether he enjoyed his french fries afterward.

Car occupants tell officer it’s french fries, not marijuana, he smells [NWF Daily News]

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