CHICKASHA, Okla_The first man
in Oklahoma
to be charged with possession of synthetic marijuana is looking at spending
seven years in jail. Chickasha
police first arrested him in November for extortion. But, when they were booking him at the Grady County
Jail they found the fake weed, sometimes called spice, or k-2, in his shoe.
Ironically, this substance was banned the same day he was caught with it. The
lab-made drug is becoming a problem in the area, and the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics
is having a hard time cracking down.
District
Attorney Jason Hicks said the market for them is growing. Before 2009,
synthetic drugs were only found in Europe, now
they're a problem in every state in the country. To add to the problem, there
is some serious money involved. It's become so widespread, it's not just
limited to marijuana. Chemists are making synthetic versions of cocaine, meth
and even heroin.
"If you
see the packaging, these companies are using smiley faces, they're using pop
rocks, they're using whatever they can to market this to a certain individual,
to teenagers to kids."
Once a year, and
only once a year, the Oklahoma legislature takes a look at these products and
evaluates them to see if they're safe enough for store shelves but the chemists
seem to always be one step ahead.
"They
watch the legislature very closely as they see these chemicals placed on the
controlled dangerous substances list and it's banned in the state of Oklahoma. They change
the chemical composition of that substance by just one molecule so it's no
longer an illegal substance and it's still legal to sell."
But when the
chemical make-up changes regularly it's nearly impossible to catch someone in
the act, even with a drug test.
"We've had
cases that have failed those test and it's obvious to the officer that the
person is under the influence of something. The officers will take them to one
of the local hospitals and have blood drawn and they'll send that off to the
Oklahoma Bureau of Investigation for analysis and those are coming back with
nothing in it."
A clean blood
test means they're walking away without so much as a citation. Hicks could not
stress this enough just because a certain version of this product can be sold
legally, does not mean its safe.
"We've got
people here in the district...kids, basically it's incapacitating, they're in
nursing homes now. It's an extremely dangerous. There are instances where kids
have taken it and died from it."
Hicks' task
force has teamed with the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics sent out a letter of
warning to local shops that sold the substance. They warned them that they'd be
back to make sure it wasn't on the shelves. Their warning was a success. They
managed to get several shops to close their doors.
There is so
much money in the synthetic drug industry that Hicks said store owners would
rather shut down their own business than simply take the product off the
shelves.
