Pubdate: Sun, 31 May 2015
Source: Honolulu Star-Advertiser (HI)
Copyright: 2015 Star Advertiser
Contact: 
http://www.staradvertiser.com/info/Star-Advertiser_Letter_to_the_Editor.html
Website: http://www.staradvertiser.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/5154
Author: Alan Schwarz, New York Times

ARREST HIGHLIGHTS CHINA'S GROWING ROLE IN GLOBAL DRUG TRADE

Authorities Nab an Alleged Kingpin in the "Spice" Market

MILWAUKEE - Scores of travelers streamed through Los Angeles 
International Airport in March, just off a flight from China. But one 
passenger, a 33-year-old Chinese chemist, never reached baggage claim.

The passenger, Haijun Tian, was arrested at the airport by Drug 
Enforcement Administration agents, the prize at the end of an 
elaborate sting operation aimed at stemming the importation and sale 
of spice, the street name for a family of synthetic drugs that look 
like marijuana and are sprayed with a dangerous hallucinogenic 
chemical, then smoked.

Tian is a leading manufacturer and exporter of the chemicals used to 
create spice, the DEA says, and his arrest underscores rising 
concerns that China, with its large and poorly regulated 
pharmaceutical sector, could become to spice what Colombia or Peru 
has been for cocaine, or Afghanistan is to heroin.

Law enforcement officials hope that information gathered from Tian 
will provide a window into the drug's hazy international underworld, 
where manufacturers tweak chemicals used to make spice and other 
drugs, staying one step ahead of federal regulators scrambling to 
identify and outlaw them.

"There's an illusion of legality," said Scott Albrecht, a special 
agent in the DEA's Milwaukee district office, who supervised the 
investigation of Tian after the agents linked him to packages shipped 
to an address here. "We make one thing illegal, and they just move on 
to the next one."

Tian's case is particularly significant not only because the DEA 
considers him a major spice exporter, but also because Chinese 
manufacturers of synthetic drugs so rarely come to the United States. 
But Tian traveled to Los Angeles after a major customer of his became 
a confidential informant for the DEA. The informant, who has not been 
identified, told investigators that about 70 percent of the spice 
sold in the United States was made from chemicals originating in 
Tian's Chinese laboratory. The location of that lab has not been disclosed.

DEA officials said in a statement Thursday that China's Ministry of 
Public Security had initiated its own investigation into Tian, his 
associates and relevant companies. "The DEA and MPS continue to 
exchange information in this joint investigation into the 
manufacturing and trafficking of synthetic cannabinoid compounds and 
other dangerous drugs," they said.

Lawyers for Tian declined to comment on the case before his trial, 
scheduled to begin in U.S. court in Milwaukee in July.

Although the use of spice has decreased in recent years, according to 
some surveys, the drug continues to be sold by street dealers, as 
well as openly on the Internet and at smoke shops and other 
retailers, as potpourri or incense with brand names like Scooby Snax 
and Black Diamond.

Spice's health effects have been underscored in recent months by a 
surge in emergency-room visits and calls to poison centers, for 
symptoms that can include extreme anxiety, violent behavior and 
delusions. Intermittent reports from several states suggest that at 
least 1,000 Americans have died since 2009 after smoking spice. 
However, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does not 
track national data for spice or other synthetic drugs, including 
those popularly known as bath salts or flakka.

"There's a constant influx of these new designer drugs, and 
toxicology tests can't keep up," said Ron Flegel, a forensic 
toxicologist at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services 
Administration. "You can tell someone's level of oxycodone intake, 
but often not the synthetics."

Once created in Chinese labs, spice chemicals are shipped in powdered 
form, in packages labeled fertilizer or industrial solvents, through 
commercial couriers to wholesalers in the United States. Those 
wholesalers liquefy the powder in acetone or alcohol, apply the 
liquid to a smokable plant material and package the mix in metallic pouches.

Spice producers have been known to mix the concoction in animal feed 
troughs, hand-cranked cement mixers and on backyard tarps. The 
packaged product, often coyly labeled "Not for human consumption," 
undergoes no safety testing, and has been found to be contaminated 
with other chemicals, mold or fungus.

Having been unable to prosecute Chinese citizens known to create and 
export spice, U.S. officials have focused instead on pursuing 
wholesale customers in this country. Since the beginning of last 
year, according to the DEA, these operations resulted in the seizure 
of 19 tons of packaged spice and the raw material to create 5 more 
tons, with a combined street value they estimate is in the hundreds 
of millions of dollars.

Spice's link to China often comes as a surprise to the families of 
the hundreds of young people whose deaths have been attributed to the 
substance. After Phil Sisneros, 22, died last May after smoking a 
form of spice, his mother, Elizabeth Manning, checked his laptop and 
found emails to and from companies in China that suggested that he 
was buying chemicals directly and making his own.

"He got it just like you'd go online and get a book," said Manning, 
who lives in Albuquerque.

As Tian awaits trial at Kenosha County Jail, one hour north, in 
Milwaukee, shiny pouches of herbal material continue to be sold at 
several smoke shops. At one store, when asked for something 
unquestionably legal, a clerk reached under the counter for a 10-gram 
pouch of a "new" potpourri product, Black Diamond. The back of the 
$48 package said: "This product complies with all federal and state 
legislation."

"It's not for human consumption," she said.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom