Pseudo-Harvard Student Arrested For Sale of Pot, LSD in Vermont

Police arrested a Harvard Extension student in Montepelier, Vt., on Dec. 22 for possession and sale of marijuana.

Brian-Jon Swift, who sold about two pounds of marijuana and some LSD to a detective, first told the police who arrested him that he was a student at Harvard. Later he admitted that he merely takes night courses in the Harvard Extension program.

Police called the two pounds of marijuana confiscated directly from Swift "the largest amount ever found in a narcotics investigation in Vermont."

Police said a smaller quantity of drugs, including LSD, was found later in a Montpelier home. Although they had a search warrant, a spokesman for the police said, detectives masqueraded as friends of Swift's in order to search his rooms.

"We could have kicked the whole place apart, and probably found a lot more," he said, "but we didn't want to raise all kinds of cain with his aunt."

The spokesman for the police said that Swift's calling himself a Harvard student will be considered a lie, and "they will ask him about it during the trial."

"He wrote down student for his occupation and we thought he meant fulltime. But he doesn't do any work in the day, so I guess he's more of a student than anything else," he said.

Swift, confined in a jail with two evenings of visiting and phoning time per week, was unavailable for comment.