A police chief in northern Nevada said Thursday he decided to use the discovery of marijuana on five Utah-bound buses carrying 250 underage skiers from Northern California as a teaching moment instead of an enforcement headache.

Elko Police Chief Don Zumwalt said he offered a choice to the mostly teenage passengers from the Bay Area: They could spend their three-day ski and snowboard trip in juvenile detention in northeast Nevada, or they could turn over the illegal drugs voluntarily.

The kids gave up the pot.

“A lot of them thanked us. Some scowled,” Zumwalt said during a telephone interview from his town of about 19,000 residents off Interstate 80. “You wonder, ‘Did I make a difference here?’”

Video showed the haul late Tuesday included pipes, bongs and rolling papers stored in jars, Tupperware, cigarette packs and plastic bags. Zumwalt said it hadn’t been weighed, but he guessed the marijuana totaled several pounds.

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