Homeless in Arizona

A good example is Sheila Polk's infamous article where she gave us the fantastic line of BS that 62 children had died from using marijuana.

I have read a lot of articles on how dangerous "spice" is, but I am starting to wonder how much of it is just police propaganda to justify their "War on Drugs"

Of course the real problem is the laws against drugs.

If marijuana was legal people would not be taking these potentially dangerous drugs and instead would be using marijuana, which has a proven thousand year track record of being the safest drug on the planet.

Source

'Spice' case court documents offer a look inside Phoenix's designer-drug world

Megan Cassidy, The Republic | azcentral.com 8:16 a.m. MST May 13, 2016

Of the three business partners at Revolution Distribution, only one would live long enough to see the grand jury indictment.

Two others died young.

In July 2015, Jeffrey Whitehead was found by a friend, hanging in his hotel room. His death was ruled a suicide.

In January 2016, Steven Latta was discovered unresponsive on his couch. His death was later attributed to a cocktail of cocaine and prescription drugs.

The third, Juan Mark Sayegh, is listed as a key player in a series of federal indictments handed down late last month.

The three had been in business together until Sayegh’s departure in June 2010. Prosecutors say that business — as well as Sayegh’s spinoff, Greenlight Distribution —involved "spice," a synthetic drug meant to mimic the effects of marijuana.

Sayegh, 42, remains the owner of the two Phoenix-area smoke shops It’s all Goodz.

He was arrested April 28, and is one of five named in a case that centers on the now-defunct Greenlight Distribution. In its two years in business, prosecutors say the company made nearly $5 million by selling spice and "bath salts," another type of synthetic drug.

The case’s April 26 filing coincided with another indictment involving Phoenix-based companies Consortium Distribution and Revolution Distribution. Although Robert W. Towery is the only defendant listed in this case, business records show Sayegh once was a part owner of Revolution.

Their indictments, along with interviews and recent plea agreements piece together the picture of a closely held local industry and a web of interconnected players.

The companies filed paperwork with the Arizona Corporation Commission. They hired for prosaic positions, such as bookkeepers, sales reps and shipping clerks.

The effort, officials allege, was all part of a carefully orchestrated scheme designed to skirt drug laws and persuade buyers that their products weren't technically illegal.

A 'legal' alternative to drugs

The spice and bath-salt market gained notoriety after a spate of macabre incidents were traced back to the designer drugs.

Their sellers marketed the products as legal and attempted to stay one step ahead of authorities by constantly changing the drugs' chemical makeup.

The blends featured whimsical names such as "Scooby Snax" and "No More Mr. Nice Guy," but strung-out users began checking into hospitals. The number of spice exposures spiked last year, according to the American Association of Poison Control Centers -- from 3,682 cases in 2014 to 7,779 in 2015.

The drugs have made high-profile appearances locally. Last summer, a Phoenix man named Kenneth Wakefield was arrested on suspicion of beheading his wife, Trina Heish, and the couple’s two dogs. He later told police that he had been smoking spice and marijuana about an hour before the attack.

Enforcement crackdowns begin

In 2012, the Drug Enforcement Administration responded with its first-ever nationwide crackdown on the burgeoning industry. Authorities arrested 90 in total, included seven Valley-area residents.

At least some of those arrests, as well as those in other high-profile Phoenix-area cases, can be connected to the recent indictments.

In late 2014, Revolution Distribution’s operations manager John Endres was sentenced to a year in prison and three years of probation in a bankruptcy case.

And in late 2013, Michael Rocky Lane was sentenced to 15 years in prison for selling and manufacturing synthetic drugs for his own company, Dynamic Distribution. Before starting Dynamic, Lane worked as one of the lead salesmen at Consortium Distribution.

Erica Curry, a public information officer for the DEA’s Phoenix division, said the upshot of these investigations in the past several years is that it's driven spice further underground. Many head shops more overtly sold the products in the past, believing they were legal.

Recently though, Curry said, spice has been relegated to the level of blatantly illegal drugs like cocaine or heroin. Still, she said, it's doubtful that the recent indictments signal the end of the industry format.

“I think there’s always going to be somebody to think of a new chemical, discover a new chemical, and try to supply the spice market with a quote-unquote brand-new product," she said. "As long as those people are around, with that kind of mentality that’s driven purely by greed, I think we’ll continue to see these investigations."

Designer drugs, often with clever names

Greenlight’s products sounded innocuous enough.

“Mary Jane’s Potpourri,” and “Mary Jane’s Private Reserve” were actually spice, prosecutors say, and “Go Fast Carpet Deodorizer” and “Quick Clean Carpet Deodorizer” were synthetic cathinones — commonly known as bath salts.

"As long as those people are around, with that kind of mentality that’s driven purely by greed, I think we’ll continue to see these investigations."

-- Erica Curry, DEA public information officer

U.S. attorneys describe an assembly line of sorts for Sayegh’s business. They say the company had a hand in each step of the process.

Greenlight first would purchase their chemicals from China, then spray them on “plant matter” and add flavoring. The products then were transferred to a warehouse or a defendant’s residence, where they would be packaged and labeled before their sale to smoke shops.

Prosecutors said Greenlight’s products were distributed around the country in addition to being sold out of Sayegh’s shops.

The products were mislabeled “not for human consumption” in a wink and a nod to its customers, who would inevitably eat, snort or smoke them, prosecutors alleged.

In an email mentioned in the indictment, one employee seems to acknowledge this as an intentional misnomer.

The employee, Terri Lynn Coversup, expressed concern that one of Sayegh’s shops was describing the products as having "flavors" rather than "aromas of incense."

"Isn't that how we want to market the Herbal Blends?" she asked.

In an effort to prove to buyers that their products were on the right side of the law, the company proffered letters from a Florida law firm that concluded that the products were free of certain prohibited substances. The letters did not, however, list the chemicals that were used in the drugs.

“(The defendants) used and distributed the ‘does not contain reports’ to customers in an effort to falsely and fictitiously inform purchasers as to the purported legality of the misbranded drugs,” the indictment states.

In the indictment, Sayegh is accused of 16 felony charges involving drugs and money laundering. His co-defendants, Coversup, Daniel Luis Valentin, Jason Elliot Gallery, and Geraldine Conner, face between four and six similar counts.

In the second case, Towery faces nine counts involving drugs and money laundering.

Revolution reportedly sold spice products, while Consortium focused on bath salts.

Towery’s indictment lists him as the owner of a company called ERT Marketing, which “marketed and sold Revolution’s spice products and Consortium’s bath salts products."

A sad footnote

Whitehead and Latta died before the cases against their company would be prosecuted. Family members said the pair's drug problems extended outside of the legal realm.

The two had met in grade school, according to Carrie Jones, Latta's wife. Jones knew Whitehead too, she said, "since he was little."

Jones said Latta's substance-abuse habits were what led to his and Jones' separation five years before his death.

"He never actually got any help for it," she said. "I wish that he would have."

Jones said she never had heard about his alleged connection to the spice industry.

A challenging prosecution

The investigations, led by the DEA and IRS, focus on a span of two years, between July 2010 and July 2012. Though several smaller players struck plea agreements in the interim, prosecutors said it took them nearly four years to indict Sayegh and Towery in relation to the companies.

Curry, the DEA spokeswoman, said the cases’ many complexities can often delay charges.

"There are several nuances to identifying the chemicals, identifying the different scheduled chemicals."

-- Erica Curry, DEA public information officer

“There are several nuances to identifying the chemicals, identifying the different scheduled chemical,” she said. “There’s a heavier burden on the law-enforcement agency and the prosecution in order to get these things moving.”

Prosecutors are largely relying on what’s known as the Federal Controlled Substances Analogue Enforcement Act to charge both cases. The 1986 law prohibits the manufacturing, distribution or possession of any substances found to produce the same effect on the body as outlawed substances.

It’s a tool commonly used in prosecution of spice and bath-salts cases, as manufacturers would often slightly alter one chemical in an effort to stay one step ahead of the law.

While the Analogue Act has helped secure convictions in previous Valley spice cases, it also sets the stage for a complex court battle hinging on competing expert testimony.

At issue: What counts as "similar" to outlawed drugs is subjective.

Sayegh’s attorney Brian Russo said the defense will argue that the chemicals had different molecular structures and don’t qualify as analogues.

“They’re somewhat complicated litigations — they require scientific testimony,” he said. “It’s not as simple as, ‘He had a bundle of marijuana and sold it.’ ”

A newer component in recent cases is the addition of the charge “introducing misbranded drugs into interstate commerce.”

The misbranding allegation carries a maximum sentence of three years in prison, and according to Russo, is easier for prosecutors to prove than the analogue charges, which can carry a maximum sentence of up to 20 years.

Other, related defendants Gina Bennenger, Andrew Gallegos and Rodney Joe Stephens all have pleaded guilty to the misbranding charges in recent months.