Fillmore Publisher to Stand Trial in Drug Case Involving 2 Teens

Douglas Huff, the 51-year-old owner and publisher of the Fillmore Herald, will stand trial on felony charges for allegedly supplying marijuana to two teenage boys, a judge ruled Thursday.

Based on testimony of the pair, Municipal Court Judge Herbert Curtis found sufficient evidence for Huff to be arraigned May 23 in Superior Court on five counts of furnishing marijuana to a minor.

The bespectacled Huff had little comment after he was released on $50,000 bail.

“The sun’s still shining,” he said as he headed out the door of the county courthouse in Ventura.

The youths, ages 14 and 16, say they smoked pot and drank peppermint schnapps with Huff at his home during the weekend of Dec. 15.

The younger youth testified that he spent three days drinking and smoking pot in a water pipe from a “$30 bag” of marijuana provided by Huff, until police arrived to take him home. The other youth said he did the same for two days. Between bouts of smoking and drinking, the pair sold newspaper subscriptions door-to-door, they told the court.

“The whole time I was there, I was so messed up I barely know what happened except for going out to make money,” said one of the youths, a ninth-grader.

The youth testified that he and other adolescents spent the night at Huff’s house after he phoned his mother and explained he was “too ripped” to come home. At some point, he introduced Huff to his mother, then went back for more drinking and pot smoking. His mother eventually called police to bring him back home, according to Huff’s public defender, Neil Quinn.

Quinn attempted to suggest that the youths had furnished the pot themselves and smoked it after Huff had gone to bed. He also tried to cast doubt on the credibility of the witnesses.

The younger youth conceded he was on probation for growing marijuana. The pair also contradicted each other on why they went to Huff’s Fernglen Circle home, with one saying they were going to find work and the other saying he anticipated a “smoke-out.”

Finally, the older youth said he had never smoked marijuana with Huff before and that he had known him for three years. Later, though, the youth said he had smoked pot with the man a year earlier.

“I was surprised to see such a casual, nonchalant reversal of testimony,” Quinn said.

Huff was arrested Dec. 22 after sheriff’s deputies discovered marijuana and drug paraphernalia during a raid.