ANACOSTIA COORDINATING COUNCIL

D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray endorsed strengthening the city's 31-year-old drug paraphernalia law during a combined Ward 7 and Ward 8 community forum about sales of paraphernalia and synthetic drugs.

“I would be happy to expand the law to make it more enforceable,” said Gray, 70, at the July 11 forum in St. Elizabeth’s Hospital auditorium in Southeast.

Gray told the audience of nearly 250 that during the D.C. Council’s two-month recess, he will work with appropriate District agencies on tougher penalties against businesses selling materials used for manufacturing and ingesting drugs. Gray was responding to an audience member’s statement that the District must instantly suspend or revoke such businesses’ licenses.

D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs Director Nicholas Majett, a forum panelist, said businesses are entitled to due process. “You have to be able to prove that they are selling synthetic drugs or drug paraphernalia,” he said.

Ryan Springer, deputy director of the D.C. Department of Health’s Addiction Prevention and Recovery Administration, said his and other agencies face numerous challenges. “There are international cartels with tons of money to send (drug manufacturing) materials into the U.S. They even have websites teaching young people how to make and use the drugs ‘safely.’”

“There are 100-plus ingredients in these drugs and only five or six of them are considered illegal,” added Springer. “The ingredients are changed from month to month.”

Panelist Peter Cho of the Korean American Grocers Association of Washington, D.C. (KAGRO-DC), operates a grocery near the Anacostia Metro station. To loud applause, he said he does not sell synthetic drugs or paraphernalia. “As you know, there is always one individual who refuses to cooperate (and sells these items),” he said, but KAGRO-DC, the police and the courts will make them adhere to the law.

“What I want to know is who’s going to go after the synthetic drug companies who teach young people how to make the drugs on the Internet?” Cho asked.

Metropolitan Police Department Commander Melvin Scott of the Narcotics and Special Investigations Division (NSID) said that three business owners on Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue in Southeast were recently arrested for selling drug paraphernalia. Scott said he depends on community residents to identify businesses breaking the law. “NSID has a text number, 50411, which people can use to notify us anonymously,” he said.

Pho Palmer, 46, the advisory neighborhood commissioner for 8C07 (Congress Heights) said the evening’s forum resulted from an incident at a May town hall about health sponsored by United Medical Center in Ward 8’s Turner Elementary School. A woman interrupted that meeting pleading for help with her son, who smoked “Scooby Snacks,” or synthetic marijuana.

In a hallway outside the meeting, the woman, sobbing, told Palmer that her son, formerly a good student at Ballou Senior High School, behaved strangely since smoking the drug; he kicked out a window screen in their home and jumped out, landing two stories down.

Similar accounts convinced Palmer that synthetic drugs are approaching crisis status among Wards 7 and 8 young people.

Thursday, July 11, 2013 - 5:30pm
St. Elizabeth's Hospital Auditorium
1100 Alabama Ave, SE

The ACC is joining eight other community organizations, business owners, youth, community leaders and Mayor Vincent C. Gray for a community dialogue about the problems surrounding the sale of synthetic marijuana (K2) and drug paraphenelia in Ward 8 businesses.

Join us to come up with real solutions to a problem effecting the livelihood of our youth and families.