Police and FDA raid local herbal stores

Feste

Feste

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Two stores in northeast Kansas that sell the herbal blend drug K2 were served with federal warrants Thursday and one store owner was arrested.

The Sacred Journey, 1103 Massachusetts St., had its doors closed Thursday and wasn’t letting customers inside. Eye-witnesses confirmed seeing people inside the store putting items in boxes.

Lydia Shontz, an employee at The Sacred Journey, said she arrived to open the store at about 10 a.m. and found the alarms going off and officers with the Food and Drug Administration and police in the store with a search warrant.

Shontz said it looked like they had been there for several hours before she arrived.

Shontz said the officers took her and another employee to the Lawrence Police Department to inquire about K2, how much K2 the store sells and employees at the store. She also said the officers asked about whether the store was selling salvia divinorum, a hallucinogen outlawed in the state in April 2008.

A bill banning K2 is currently circulating through the state, but the drug has not yet been banned.

Shontz said the police told her the search warrant allowed the FDA to confiscate anything that the organization deems as being sold as a drug in the store. She said the FDA saw K2 as a drug, rather than the herbal blend it’s sold as in the store.

Shontz said she was expecting the police involvement, but not federal involvement. And not this soon.

“It sucks,” Shontz said. “I knew that this would happen and I knew it would happen to me because I’m the first one here in the morning.”

She said she thought the store might lose customers who think K2 was illegal because of the searches.

Bouncing Bear Botanicals, a website that sells herbs, entheogens, and K2, was also served with a federal search warrant Thursday morning. The warehouse facility for the website is located in Oskaloosa.

Ryan Vanchieri works in shipping at the company’s headquarters. He said officers from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, FDA and Jefferson County sheriffs detained, handcuffed, searched and questioned employees. He said they searched computer files and seized business property.

“They were really nice about it,” Vanchieri said. “But they were stealing private property.”

Jefferson County Attorney Caleb Stegall announced that Bouncing Bear owner Jonathan Sloan was arrested during the operation and was being held in Jefferson County Jail on charges of possession of controlled substances. Formal charges are expected to be filed today.

Vanchieri said he thought the business was going to be shut down for good.

He said the entire property was confiscated and employees were not allowed to return to the premises.

Edited by Taylor Bern
Click to expand...

More here:
http://media.lawrence.com/news/documents/2010/02/05/Sloan.pdf
http://www.dancingbearbotanicals.com/index.php?topic=1451.0

Article link: http://www.kansan.com/news/2010/feb/04/police_officer_herbs/
 
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Wow, Bouncing Bear got raided. How about them apples.
 
I hope Mr. Sloan has earned and saved enough profits to present a proper legal defense. I really want to see this court case!
 
Apparently Mr. Sloan's father is posting on the BBB forums saying they seized all of the assets; he doesn't have the money to make bail even, nevermind a lawyer.
 
Wow. What bullshit. Goddamn Government hillbillys should leave us nice Ppl alone. I used to buy from the store and the Ppl there are really nice. Hopefully things go alright. Fuck the police. Fuck the government. They can suck my balls.
 
Fuck the authorities. Who the fuck are they to violate our rights? They all need to get a real job. I'm tired of seeing our tax money go to waste.
 
This is so wrong.
They are seizing private property that is LEGAL for christ's sake.
Because they believe it is being "sold as a drug"???
If I sold banana peels as a drug, would they haul my ass away? Doubtful!
They are pissed that people actually get high from K2 and other herbs, and they don't yet have the power to stop them.
Small minded, small hearted PIG FUCKS:X:X:X:!:!:!:X:X:X:p:p:p
 
If I sold banana peels as a drug, would they haul my ass away? Doubtful!
Click to expand...
They can arrest people for selling grass as weed or aspirin as mdma pills, so they probably would & could. :\
 
Well known ethnobotanical vendor raided

LINK>
http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2010/f...arged-after-sacred-journey-investig/?breaking

It’s not yet illegal, but federal officials and local law enforcement have pulled the popular, marijuana-like substance known as K2 off the shelves at the Lawrence store Sacred Journey, 1103 Mass.

The Food and Drug Administration, along with area police, raided the store and a major distributor of the herbal mixture Thursday, leading to drug charges against a Lawrence man in Jefferson County.

Jonathan Sloan, 29, owner of Bouncing Bears Botanicals, was charged in Jefferson County District Court on Friday with eight felony drug offenses, including the unlawful manufacturing and distribution of controlled substances.

Jefferson County Attorney Caleb Stegall said Sloan was arrested after an investigation of a warehouse facility he owns in Oskaloosa, north of Lawrence. Bouncing Bears Botanicals, 14501 S. U.S. Highway 59, had supplied Sacred Journey with K2, along with other herbal products. Federal, state and local authorities seized more than $700,000 in cash from Sloan’s business and bank accounts. Numerous items, including thousands of cactus plants and 20 toads, were removed from the warehouse, according to warehouse employees and Sloan’s attorney.

The charges come one day after law enforcement seized Sacred Journey’s entire K2 supply, other “ethnobotanicals” and certain cactus plants. Authorities on scene said the FDA was in charge of the investigation, but an FDA spokesman said the agency does not publicly comment on active investigations.

The raid and seizure at the store came as a “shock” to Melissa Hart, who resigned as Sacred Journey store manager on Friday.

She said the store was very careful in ensuring that the products it sold complied with state and federal laws.

“We had no knowledge of anything that was illegal,” she said.

The store reopened Friday.

The FDA has yet to release further details about the investigation.

Sloan’s attorney, Scott Gyllenborg, said his client was operating a legitimate botanical plant business, which he said was “one of the country’s, if not the world’s, biggest distributors of these botanicals.”

“These are remedies. These are items used in religious ceremonies that are legal, that can be put to illegal purposes,” Gyllenborg said.

Sloan is scheduled to return April 13 to Jefferson County District Court for a preliminary hearing. Prosecutors said more charges could be filed against him. Bond was set at $150,000.

Johnson County officials raised public awareness about K2 in November, warning that the substance is a synthetic version of marijuana, though it’s marketed as an incense.

Kansas House legislators this week passed a bill that would make illegal the sale or possession of the substances found in K2, but that legislation has yet to become law. Gov. Mark Parkinson has spoken in favor of the bill, which is expected to hit his desk this session.

Sacred Journey has been at the center of the debate about K2, as store employees and customers have begun speaking out against a ban on the substance.


The charges against Sloan

• Unlawful manufacturing of controlled substances: Dimethlyltryptamine (DMT)

• Unlawful manufacturing of controlled substances: Mescaline

• Unlawful manufacturing of controlled substances: Lysergic Acid Amide

• Unlawful cultivation or distribution of controlled substances: Mescaline

• Unlawful cultivation or distribution of controlled substances: Dimethlyltryptamine; Chacruna; Illinois Bundleflower; Epena; Cebil Seeds.

• Unlawful cultivation or distribution of controlled substances: Bufotenine, Epena, Chaliponga, Cebil Seeds, Colorado River Toads.

• Unlawful cultivation or distribution of controlled substances: Lysergic Acid Amide, Morning Glory Seeds, Rivea Corymbosa.

• Unlawful possession of certain drug precursors and drug paraphernalia: Plastic jugs and filters used or intended for unlawful use to manufacture, cultivate, plant propagate, harvest, test, analyze or distribute a controlled substance.



I know that the focus of the investigation was on the K2 blends, but this kind of exposure on the ethnobotanical scene at all is not good. Time to Boycot bs herbal/ JWH or CP series blends to save the real ethnobotanicals.
 
That fucking SUCKS. Ive ordered off BBB multiple times, always with great service. The owner is a really chill guy with a good sense of humor, hes a cool dude.. so sad to see this shit happen to him!

I have faith that he will come better off in the court system.. afterall, he wasnt breaking any laws. Its just a publicity act i think, to help the DEA get more support on banning what little freethinking material is publicly available.
 
I'm still not processing this fully. I'm actually pretty sad about this. I loved that store and the people too. I want to cry.
 
Why is anyone here shocked that one of the biggest domestic suppliers of DMT and mescaline was just raided?
 
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