Arresting Vendors of Grey Market Psychoactives
by Jon Hanna
Two recent arrests in Kansas of vendors selling non-scheduled psychoactive products have thrown a spotlight on the question of what substances can be sold legally, and which government agencies might have a say in such decisions. These arrests are tied to the marketing of herbs laced with synthetic cannabinoid receptor-agonists that has been happening worldwide for the last few years. The outcome from these cases could have important implications for those dealing in ethnobotanical products.
On February 4, 2010, Jon Sloan was arrested on charges related to a number of products sold through his company, Bouncing Bear Botanicals, which was raided by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, in cooperation with local law enforcement.1 By the end of the day, $700,000 worth of merchandise, property, and bank account funds were confiscated, and a $906,000 bond was set. Sloan is facing seventy-five years in prison
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Although it likely has little direct bearing on cases in the United States, the question of what changes a legal plant into a controlled drug was addressed by a British judge during a 2007 case that dealt with this exact topic. When presented with the information that dried and chipped Trichocereus cacti was unlikely to be useful (in that form) for the purpose of getting high--that is, that some further means of processing was required in order to extract a consumable drug from the plant--the judge ruled that dried/chipped Trichocereus cacti could not be considered a mixture or preparation containing mescaline.
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