South Florida's source for synthetic drugs: The China pipeline

From Nanjing, a bustling city on the south bank of China's Yangtze River, the package traveled over 8,000 miles to make its way to an unassuming barbershop along Miami's Coral Way. It didn't contain hair-care products.

At a Miami Customs warehouse, suspicious federal inspectors flagged the nondescript brown paper parcel sent from someone named only Alva. Inside, they found a variant of methylone, one of a host of synthetic chemicals sold as the euphoric club drug known as Molly.

A records check revealed that in just two months, 21 similar packages from China had been mailed to the Heads Up Barbershop just outside Coral Gables. After a 20-month investigation, which included an undercover agent posing as a mail carrier, federal authorities this spring quietly arrested a 28-year-old former Florida International University honors student named David "Sway" McConnell. He was using the small shop as a drop for an illegal party-pill operation -- built entirely on chemicals imported in bulk from China.

For McConnell and other dealers in South Florida and across the country, the loosely regulated pipeline of synthetic drugs from China has created a new model for doing business in the digital age. Tech-savvy dealers order from overseas suppliers with just a few mouse clicks and pay with simple money transfers. They don't need go-fast boats or drug "mules," long the smuggling tools of old-school narco-traffickers. Dealers in the booming synthetics trade use the trusty U.S. Postal Service or big-name parcel shippers.

"There is no typical drug dealer anymore," South Florida's U.S. Attorney Wifredo Ferrer said. "It's easy to get access to this stuff. It's less dangerous and less risky. These new drug dealers are using the Internet, and all they need is a runner to go intercept the package from overseas."

Read more ~> http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/crime/article35417625.html#storylink=cpy


Comments


[16 Points] young_k:

they just posted a whole e-book looking article on a methylone controlled delivery in the same area...they are really milking this stuff arent they.


[12 Points] None:

This seems to be a big problem in Florida. That alpha-PVP shit is going around that area as a drug called flakka. It seems to be a really big problem in Florida and according to the reading I've done that part of Florida is one of the main hubs for a-PVP related bad trips, in one case a guy ripped a cops badge off his chest and tried to stab him to death with it (hilarious).

Drugs like methylone are the bane of our scene IMO. These compounds really scare me for some reason, and it is likely one of the many manifestations of the drug war getting out of control and turning against the side that is winning it (us).

I think that along with rampant addiction problems and other social issues that manifest as the result of impractical/corrupt drug laws, all these RC's that are flooding the market are directly related to the fact that the drug laws are only making things worse, and in a way it is kind of analogous to the phenomenon that occurs with gun control when guns are banned, which causes the sale of guns to be pushed into the black market, and some are bootlegged and modified only to become more dangerous, and all the problems that result.


[12 Points] throwawayk5zq47j6wd3:

Fucking methylone....


[8 Points] None:

Gotta love the drug war, right fellas?


[8 Points] LedLevee:

Inside, they found a variant of methylone, one of a host of synthetic chemicals sold as the euphoric club drug known as Molly.

HNGGGGGG


[2 Points] None:

The British Sisterhood of Methodist Chemists recommends METH, not methylone.

You can make it at home in your own lab and it keeps you up for days doing important shit like writing on reddit and writing internet wrongs.


[1 Points] macrocrystalline:

Is "Alva" Alice's new pseudonym?


[1 Points] None:

OK OK OK! Maybe it was unfair of me to knock methylone. I was just knocking some of these newer drugs that haven't had much of a history of human use, and whose exact mechanism of action is unknown.

I was kinda grouping things like a-PVP and MDPV together with the newer drugs like methylone and mephadrone, so excuse me all to hell if that was unfair or if some of you are fucking married to these drugs, but I foresee them fucking you over and leaving you high and dry for some dick, however you want to interpret that.

People do get pretty defensive of their drugs tho, but my point was that the classic drugs being illegal causes people to make these weird analogs, some of which can be incredibly dangerous.

THAT was my point, sorry if I had to drag your wife drug into this mess