Local prosecutors launch assault on synthetic marijuana

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Local prosecutors launch assault on synthetic marijuana

They made $191,791 in under two months while pretending to sell tattoos and supplies in Camden, Mich., a town of barely 500 people.

But Penny Hawkins, manager of The Clubhouse restaurant, said that everyone knew what the couple was really doing.

“Cars came with liscense plates from Ohio and Indiana,” she said. “They spent two or three minutes inside and then left. Nobody gets a two minute tattoo.”

On April 15, Hillsdale county residents Douglas Cardwell, 41, and Michelle Demayo, 42, will be tried  on six felony counts, all centering on accusations of the sale of synthetic marijuana known as “spice.”

Because spice is a Schedule I narcotic and the couple possessed more than 1,000 grams, they face life in prison and fines up to one million dollars each.

In Camden, south of Hillsdale, the couple ran a tattoo parlor, Addikted 2 Ink, and allegedly sold spice under the store’s guise from September through November 2013.

“They never did a single tattoo and never had a licensed tattoo artist,” Hillsdale County Assistant Prosecutor Rod Hassinger said. “It was just a big front for their designer drug business.”

After the Hillsdale Narcotics Enforcement Team made an undercover purchase of 3.5 grams of synthetic marijuana at the store in November, officers from the Hillsdale Sheriff County Sheriff’s Office and Reading Police Department served a search warrant on both the shop and their residence. Officers confiscated more than 6.65 pounds of synthetic marijuana from both buildings, in addition to 500 glass pipes, 600 packages of rolling papers, and assorted drug paraphernalia.

“They felt they could get around the law. They were armed with lab reports for their supplier and had confidence that what they were doing was legal,” said Neal Brady, Hillsdale County prosecuting attorney.

Cardwell and Demayo simply didn’t read the Michigan statute, Hassinger said.

Though the sale of spice has been prohibited in Michigan since June 2012, there have not been enough prosecutions to send a message, Hassinger said. Many prosecuting attorneys avoid such cases because they tend to be difficult and prohibitively expensive for most counties.

The Hillsdale County prosecutor’s office, however, has taken a strong stance against the drug to send a message to dealers and manufacturers: Brady won’t back down.

“Two days after we shut down the shop here in Camden, a shop stopped doing business in Sturgis, Mich.,” Hassinger said. “The word has gotten out all because of Mr. Brady.”

Before Cardwell and Demayo moved to Camden, the pair operated out of another tattoo parlor under the same name in Angola, Ind. But when a two and half year investigation by Indiana law enforcement drove them out of the state, they fled across the border. In just under a two month period from September to the middle of November 2013, Cardwell and Demayo recorded the $191,791 in cash sales in handwritten, business ledger, according to a police report.

“They were making a lot of money off of this and really harming the community,” Hassinger said.

Cardwell and Demayo operated within a gigantic, million-dollar web of synthetic marijuana dealers in the Midwest, centering on accused designer drug producer Barry Bays, the owner of Little Arm Inc. that distributes as B&B Distribution, according to Hassinger.

“The guy who runs it has one deformed arm. He’s got a little arm,” Hassinger said. “But he’s out of business now.”

Hassinger said use of the drug among teenagers and young adults is an epidemic. Spice remains most popular amongst 12 to 17 year old males, the Michigan Department of Community Health reports. Nationally, 8 percent of high school seniors reported using synthetic marijuana in the past year, according to the National Institutes of Health.

“Whoever is marketing it did an intelligent job by attaching the word marijuana to it because a lot of people don’t think marijuana is dangerous,” Brady said. “If you called methamphetamines ‘meth marijuana,’ you would probably see an increase in popularity.”

The term synthetic marijuana is, despite clever marketing, a dangerous misnomer. The drug merely mimics the effects of THC and has side-effects far beyond those of marijuana.

“It has a devastating effect,”Brady said. “I’m surprised that people in Hillsdale haven’t done something violent to others or themselves yet.”

Because the drug was first sold legally at gas stations, head shops, and convenience stores, many think of it as a safe or legal high.

“They sell around the universities mainly to college students who think it’s just a legal  version of marijuana,” said Sen. Rick Jones (R-Mich).

As reports on the dangers of spice spread in the late 2000s, state and federal agencies began looking for a solution. In November 2011, the Drug Enforcement Agency temporarily placed five synthetic cannabinoids into Schedule I under the Federal Controlled Substances Act. In 2012, President Barack Obama signed the Synthetic Drug Abuse Prevention Act, permanently placing the 26 cannabinoids into Schedule I. By doing so, the Obama administration unwittingly created an almost infinite loophole for manufacturers.

“Rogue chemists would change a few molecules and legally be able to sell a new substance,” Jones said.

That built-in Achilles’ heel inspired more than 43 state bans across the country. Michigan legislators briefly prohibited seven substances commonly found in synthetic marijuana from October to December of 2010, calling for a maximum of one year in jail for possession. But in December, those same lawmakers passed a new drug sentencing bill, signed by Gov. Jennifer Granholm, that unintentionally stripped all criminal penalties. Lawmakers were so thoroughly absorbed in a lame-duck session they failed to recognize the oversight.

“At the very end of her time in office as a governor, Granholm mistakenly signed another law that invertedly legalized synthetic marijuana,” Jones said. “We had to go back in and ban the K2 and all of its other nicknames.”

Current Gov. Rick Snyder signed a legislative bundle reclassifying spice as a Schedule 1 drug, solving the prior legislative blunder and federal loophole on June 19, 2012. Jones sponsored one of the key bills that allows the Department of Community Health and Michigan Board of Pharmacy to temporarily designate a drug as a controlled substance.