Criminal Law Attorneys in Fort Lauderdale Bust New Drug Law Territory - Video on Spice

Aug. 10, 2012 - PRLog -- Spice or Spice Gold, Spice Diamond, Yucatan Fire, Solar Flare, K2 Summit, Genie, PEP Spice, and Fire n Ice.  Just a few of the names showing up legally and illegally all around Ft. Lauderdale FL, and the rest of the world.  Why "legally and illegally."  Andrew Smallman is a partner in the local criminal defense law firm of Gilbert and Smallman.  He explains the situation:

"Manufacturers of the original Spice herbal marijuana substitutes, figured out that if you added spray of chemicals onto some otherwise legally smoked plants, you could get a similar high to that of cannabis.  The claim is made that the inventors of this approach were not 100% forthcoming about the ingredients, and may have failed to mention the added chemicals in their packaging," Smallman smiles.

Turns out that the Spice makers went out of business for various reasons, and had not secured rights to the brand name.  Others, rightly seeing a big pot-ential market grabbed the name, variations of the name, or entirely new names and started selling what appeared to many as legal.

Smallman points out that states, countries, the USA, counties, and even cities started adding these products to their banned substances lists.  But they were faced with two problems.  "The makers kept changing the chemical compound to skirt the new bans, and the new compounds were hard to track in the bloodstream.  Confusion in this case was not the result of inhaling the substance."

Today, the legal situation is fluid.  Some of these products are being offered in retail stores with no police effort to stop the sale.  Retailers have no way to be sure if they are selling a banned substance or not.  Consumer who buy and use any of these products have no clarity on what is and is not legal.  Smallman gives an example:  We have a client who was picked up for violating his parole.  Prosecutors claim he was high on a product he bought at a local convenience store.  Our client says he could not have 'willfully and substantially" violated his parole.  That is the legal standard and we think he has a strong case."

Andrew Smallman has produced a short video that goes into greater detail about the case and about the entire issue of synthetic cannabis.  Watch it here.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkPnaAYIrx8



If you have a criminal legal matter of any kind or one specifically relating to the area of drug possession, possession with intent, or parole violation, check out the website of Gilbert and Smallman at http://www.hgilbertlaw.com or call 786-371-4431 24/7.