Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard plans to have Michigan National Guard members and Reservists help him incinerate some evidence found in a recent drug bust.

About 1,500 cigars recovered from a marijuana dealer will be torched, one at a time, by Michigan military members serving overseas.

"Rather than have them destroyed in an incinerator, it would make more sense to give them to our heroes deployed across the globe," Bouchard said Thursday.

The move isn't designed to encourage smoking. But for military members who partake, the smokes could provide a respite from a stressful routine, Bouchard said.

The stogies carry sought-after Cuban labels such as Cohiba, but Bouchard said the labels are counterfeit; the cigars actually are from the Dominican Republic. "If they were real Cubans, we wouldn't be able to give them away," Bouchard said.

The cigars, valued at around $15,000, were in a car stopped as part of a January drug bust along M-59 in the east end of Oakland County.