Kush sting nets 6, assets
3 smoke shops tied to overdose may face closure
Weeks after a mass Kush overdose sent 16 people to area hospitals, an undercover operation netted six arrests, court injunctions and the seizure of hundreds of thousands of dollars in assets, including 30 gold bars.
Three local smoke shops face possible closure after their owners were arrested on criminal charges along with several store employees who authorities said were openly selling the synthetic cannabinoids.
More than 30 pounds of illegal narcotics were seized in the raids with additional arrests expected, local officials said Thursday in announcing the combined city, county and state effort.
“For a long time the focus was simply on the users,” Mayor Sylvester Turner told reporters at Houston Police Department headquarters. “We are focusing on those who are selling and distributing this stuff.”
The drugs — often mistakenly called synthetic marijuana — are a mixture of leaves doused with a chemical compound that can mimic the effects of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. Until the passage of recent state legislation, possession and sale
of the drug had been difficult to prosecute.
A Chronicle investigation last month found growing use of the synthetic drug — and at least five deaths — in the Houston area, with zombie-like users common in some local parks requiring daily help from first responders.
Among those arrested this week were two brothers who owned smoke shops that reportedly supplied some of the drugs responsible for the June overdoses in an area of Hermann Park known as Kush Corner. Minh A. Dang, 42, and Tuan A. Dang, 46, are charged with engaging in organized criminal activity and are being held with bail set at $500,000.
Lawyers for the two men had not yet been identified in court records.
Police also arrested four store employees and are seeking two others on charges of drug possession and intent to deliver.
The arrests were accompanied by court orders to temporarily halt the sales of Kush, K2, Spice and similar synthetic drugs at multiple stores operated by the Dang brothers, Spice Boutique and Spice Inc.
58 businesses identified
State and county attorneys are asking the court for a permanent injunction to shut the stores down for one year.
“We want to make sure we take their money,” County Attorney Vince Ryan said at the news conference. “The real goal is to end the horrible results that taking this substance can have on people, especially young people.”
Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson, the Texas Attorney General’s Office and local law enforcement joined Turner and Ryan in announcing the sweep, which began with a tip to Houston police and quickly spiraled into something much bigger.
“About a third to one-half of the narcotics division began working on this because it was so pervasive and so large,” said Houston Assistant Police Chief Mark Curran.
Investigators soon identified 58 businesses across the city and county suspected of selling synthetic cannabinoids.
“We filed dozens of narcoticsrelated charges in regards to those locations,” said Sgt. Marsha Todd, adding HPD officers have seized more than 400 pounds of synthetic cannabinoids already this year.
“The more we investigate these stores, the more we go into each store and seize the products they have that are illegal, the word gets out,” she said. “The more we’re going to the stores, the harder (Kush) is to get.”
The surge of Kush use has overburdened first responders. Between September 2015 and June 30, nearly 1,400 of the 3,000 overdose calls that city paramedics responded to were attributed to synthetic cannabinoids.
In response, Turner vowed to bulk up police presence downtown and in area parks, and police began trying to target major distributors.
Frozen assets a first
The population of Kush smokers appears to have dropped by about half from areas where they used to congregate, though they still can be found clustered at the Central Library or under the U.S. 59 overpass in Midtown, officials said.
The substances can cause hallucinations, seizures, violent or erratic behavior in users, along with cardiac arrest. Despite the dangers, however, users seek the substances out because they produce an intense high, are cheap, plentiful, and are seen as a way of avoiding detection on routine drug tests.
“We are fed up with the impact these crimes are having on our
quality of life,” Anderson said.
Changes to the state’s drug laws last legislative session closed legal loopholes that had allowed dealers to sell the substances with virtual impunity, she said.
The Texas Attorney General’s Office and the Harris County Attorney’s Office are set to be in court next week to ask that the three stores be shut down for a year. The AG’s office has frozen more than $450,000 in the store owners’ assets, a first in a synthetic cannabinoid case in Texas, said Marc Rylander, a spokesman for the attorney general. The agency also sued the Dangs, arguing they violated the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act and were operating as a nuisance under state civil laws.
The lawsuit seeking the injunction outlines details of the investigation, which began with the overdose in Hermann Park. Investigators learned that Kush was sold at the Spice Boutique stores, and undercover officers traveled to the Dang brothers’ store at 9896 Southwest Freeway and purchased a packet of “Black Widow,” one of the drug’s street names, for $30. That same day, officers from HPD’s Narcotics Division visited the Dangs’ other stores at 2574 South Loop West and 12745 East Freeway and made undercover purchases, according to the suit.
Officers visited the stores at other times, making other purchases from store clerks who kept signs up informing customers of the drugs and flavors available.
The case is not the first time civil laws have been used to stop the illegal sale of Kush in Harris County. The county attorney’s office has won injunctions in nine other cases, with four businesses forced to shut down, said Assistant Harris County Attorney Celena Vinson. Separately, in June, a Harris County jury issued an $878,000 verdict after 20 minutes of deliberation in a civil case against a store in northwest Harris County that had been selling the drugs.
‘One step ahead’ of dealers
The Dang brothers and at least one of their boutiques have caught the eye of law enforcement before in Harris County.
The elder Dang has been convicted three times in Harris County for misdemeanor charges of operating an adult video arcade without a proper city permit, dating back to 2008. One of the charges stemmed from activities at the 9896 Southwest Freeway store.
His brother was convicted of a misdemeanor obscenity charge in 2000 but the 2008 charges against him in the operation of the adult arcade were dismissed for lack of evidence.
Authorities said they hope the arrest and their operations will make other Kush sellers wary of peddling the drug.
“We are one step ahead of the Kush dealers,” Anderson said. “Just because Kush is being sold out of a storefront, it is still illegal, and we will be prosecuting anyone who sells this to the fullest extent of the law.”