Dangerous Hippy Drug Ring Thwarted! Eleventy!! Exclamation Pointz!! Einz!
Psychedelic drug ring busted
MICHAEL ATKINS | Saturday, February 23, 2008 at 12:30 am
(Photo: Savannah Morning News)
Authorities arrested 22 suspects and seized large supplies of psychedelic drugs Friday morning, wrapping up a four-month investigation into a downtown Savannah drug ring.
Several of those arrested were college students, police said, and many of the confiscated drugs - which included chocolate-covered mushrooms and butterscotch-flavored marijuana - are not hauls typically encountered by agents in the Savannah area.
"These are some unusual drugs that we haven't seen a lot in Chatham County," said Roy Harris, commander of the Chatham-Savannah Counter Narcotics Team. "It's concerning because some of the psychedelic drugs can look relatively harmless, but they can be very dangerous."
In all, officers seized one-half a pound of marijuana, about 17 hits of LSD, more than 50 psilocybin mushrooms and an unspecified amount of cocaine and dimethyltryptamine, also known as DMT.
Drug paraphernalia, scales and about $6,500 in cash also were impounded.
Of the 22 people arrested, some were students at the Savannah College of Art and Design, authorities said.
Bruce Chong, dean of communications at SCAD, confirmed late Friday that two students had been arrested, but he said no drugs were found on campus.
"We have a very stringent zero-tolerance policy here at SCAD," Chong said, adding that the school offers substance-abuse programs and 24-hour counseling. "Violations of our drug policy in the past have included expulsion."
All of the suspects were taken into custody without incident.
"We didn't have any problems with anybody. But when you're taking away someone's freedom, you don't know how they're going to react," said Micah Ward, Georgia Bureau of Investigation special agent in charge in Savannah. "You have to plan for everything."
Both GBI and CNT agents had been making undercover purchases during the past four months. About 5 a.m. Friday, the two agencies joined Savannah-Chatham police and Chatham County sheriff's deputies to serve about 100 felony arrest warrants.
The officers broke up into four teams, Harris said, and fanned out to more than a dozen locations in and around downtown Savannah.
Five suspects remained at large Friday, officials said.
"I'm very proud of our folks. They did a tremendous job, and it was a well-planned operation," Harris said.
Drugs such as LSD, which can be absorbed through the skin, caused particular concern for responding agents, who wore protective clothing and thick gloves Friday morning.
"We took great caution to avoid the transfer of chemicals to agents' skin," Ward said. "We don't want law enforcement personnel exposed to that."
List of suspects arrested
Lunden Blake
Matthew Boardman
Kristopher Bolleter
Michael Patrick Brouphy
James Timothy Calkin
Sean Carter
Benjamin Davis
Benjamin English
Patrick Collin Fitzgerald
Grace Elizabeth Gietl
Dave Haggerty
Joshua Jones
Glen Lasio
Marie LePichon
Sarah Lewis
Mitch Longan
David Molajo
Chris O'Hara
Fabio Piparo
Jon Pownall
Andrew Wagner
Jeffery Waligora
Okay, I probably am going to hell for this, but I find it hilarious that the cops were handling ZOMG LSD like it was nuclear waste.
Also, my neighbors reported that the local news showed some of the drugs and swear they were packaged like little Hershey's Kisses and that there was "vanilla meth" and "strawberry-chocolate heroin" and "rum raisin cocaine." (Okay, I made the last one up.)
I bet the SCAD students were in charge of packaging. The wrappings and such were darn clever.
Now, I'm not seeing, in the newspaper articles, anything about hard drugs like meth and horse and coke. Just psychedelics. Excuse me if I'm not too freaked out by such a thing.
1) Hello, Savannah = port city. Drugs come into ports and have done for eleventy billion years. Please stop being so shocked to find drugs in Savannah, it makes you look mentally dim.
2) Students doing drugs? OMFGWTFBBQ, that has nevar happened evar before. Shock!
3) Thanks a lot, guys, now we'll get moar Snopes-debunked urban legends about Strawberry Meth. I could do without my elderly relatives spamming me anew with ZOMG! urban legend stuff. "See? It's TR00!" Just stop it.
4) Butterscotch-flavoured pot sounds vile, not enticing. Srsly. You'd have to be high to come up with a stupid idea like...oh. Never mind.
5) I hate mushrooms. You can put chocolate on top of a magic variety of same, and I will still be utterly grossed out. Mushrooms are icky and slimy and grow in poo.
5 1/2) Erm...I am slightly impressed by the packaging / marketing campaign. Little Hershey Kisses wrappers disguising brain bomb drugs? Holy crud, that's...genius.
6) Again, I ask you: "butterscotch"? Ew! Is this a "flavoured Blunt" thing? If so, stop that right now. Pot is supposed to taste like, hmm, a shrub of some sort, innit? You're doing it wrong.
7) Five suspects remain at large, y'all. The are probably watching "Bill and Ted" or "Jackass" in someone's mom's basement, or sleeping, or out buying Cheet-Os, Moon Pies and RC Cola. Careful, they might be armed with a toxic Phish sticker, a spiked hacky-sack, or a poisoned tube of dread wax. Dangerous? Only if they haven't washed lately and you get stuck in a lift next to one. Such drama. I think the police can tone down on all the "OMG, HIGHLY dangerous evil weaponry-stashing DRUG PUSHERS, K?" stuff.
8) I spy Grateful Dead Bear. My lack of surprise is EPIC. Or massive. Or something.
9) If you expand your mind, be sure it still fits in its original container, please. No one wants to see that stuff, man.
10) Reading this kind of news story makes me feel old and bored. Why? DMT just makes you see invisible pixies and crap. Supposedly. Is that a selling point? Clue me in. LSD and pot are hardly "gateway drugs." I am unimpressed. My lack of panic, let me SHO U IT. I want to read about the police busting some of the crack dens and meth huts downtown: now that would fill me with a sense of moral outrage ("Drugs are bad, mm'kay?!") and voyeuristic excitement.
Also: Damn hippies don't know how to share their toys. Harrumph. ;)
Also also: No worries, moral arbiters! The most exciting thing I've consumed lately was a spinach alfredo pizza that had a stray fungoid object on it. I did not consume it and then see God(dess) or feel really groovy, I just picked it off, said "bleah, nasty mushie" and ate the rest of my slice (nom nom nom) happily.
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