The men who sold it called it Mr. Miyagi, a mind-altering chemical compound mixed with vegetable material and resembling marijuana.
It was clear the drug was meant to be smoked for a potent high. But less clear was how to punish the people who pushed it.
As drug enforcement authorities sound alarms over the effects and accessibility of synthetic drugs, the Mr. Miyagi case in Louisiana is but one example of how courts are struggling for consistency in dealing with substances that are developing faster than the laws to govern them. The result is a sentencing process that’s often bogged down by complex science and can yield uneven results in courtrooms.
“It’s been a challenge for the courts and for the regulatory agencies to manage and make appropriate, logical decisions relating to these new substances,” said Greg Dudley, a West Virginia University chemistry professor who has testified in synthetic drug cases.
The federal panel that sets sentencing policy is studying ways for courts to better handle cases involving drugs such as “bath salts,” which can provoke violent outbursts.
Drug Enforcement Administration officials have repeatedly warned about the products’ harmful effects but say it’s hard to police them. The DEA’s forensic testing laboratories are “overwhelmed with the amount of substances” they’re trying to identify and analyze, spokesman Russ Baer said.
Amid the concerns about consistency in punishment, the U.S. Sentencing Commission is doing a two-year study on synthetic drugs that, among other things, will look at whether to update the drug quantity table that federal judges rely on at sentencing.
Judges use the table to come up with the starting point for the sentence based on the amount of drugs involved, then factor in considerations like a defendant’s criminal history and level of responsibility. That’s easy for drugs like marijuana, cocaine and heroin that are listed on the table.
The problem is that “bath salts” and similar synthetic or designer drugs aren’t included.
In prosecutions involving those drugs, judges consult the table to find the most similar drug to the one in their case, based on chemical makeup and pharmacological effects. They then convert the drug quantity in their case to the equivalent quantity of marijuana to calculate a base offense level. But that often causes confusion.