Kush crackdown
Raids are aiming high on distribution ladder and targeting the profiteers.
A man stands in a zombie-like trance in a downtown park. A foul, chemical stench emanates from cigarettes smoked in Midtown. Sixteen people suffer from a drug overdose in the shadow of the world’s largest medical center.
The symptoms of the Kush scourge are obvious in the heart of Houston. If you want to find the cause, it’ll take a bit of a drive.
Mayor Sylvester Turner announced Thursday that a joint law enforcement sweep focusing on Kush had targeted three Spice Boutique stores — businesses that sold dangerous synthetic marijuana and other bizarre off-market drugs with names like Zeagra and Rhino 69 — all of which were tucked away in strip malls and business parks outside Loop 610.
It would be easy for Turner to make a big show of arresting the homeless and destitute who have become the public face of Kush right in the middle of our city. That would make for quite the photo-op and certainly solve the problem as far as many Houstonians are concerned. But instead he worked with Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson, Harris County Attorney Vince Ryan, the Texas Attorney General’s office and local law enforcement to attack the cause of this continuing synthetic drug problem instead of merely the most obvious manifestation.
Families trying to enjoy a morning in Hermann Park or downtown workers riding Metro probably have never been to these feederroad head shops, or even know that they exist. But they know the consequences of the stores’ wares when they see dead-eyed people wandering through the core of our city and plastic storage bag-sealed foil packets lying in the gutter.
Aiming high on the ladder of drug distribution targets the people truly responsible for these social ills — those who make money on the sickness that they spread through a vulnerable population. That money was apparent in the 30 gold bars and $230,000 seized in the Kush raid, in addition to the $450,000 frozen while court actions proceed.
For too long, the war on drugs has put the heaviest burden on the people lowest on the totem pole. Houston’s leaders were smart to break that pattern. The annoying or scary, but generally harmless, don’t deserve the full force of the law. If only the Drug Enforcement Administration would follow Houston’s model.
On the same day that Turner held a press conference on the Kush raids, the federal drug agency announced that it would not alter the Schedule I classification of marijuana. This means that the national government still believes that marijuana is just as dangerous as heroin. For those counting, more than 10,500 people died from a heroin overdose in 2014, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
We can’t find a single example of someone dying from a marijuana overdose.
This Schedule I designation continues to drive people toward dangerous alternatives like Kush. As Chronicle reporters St. John Barned-Smith and Gabrielle Banks documented last month, plenty of Kush users turn to the dangerous synthetic drug because it won’t get them in trouble on drug tests — marijuana does.
Kush is scary. Kush is dangerous. Kush doesn’t belong anywhere in Houston. But until our national drug laws actually target the things we want to stop, the Kush problem will keep lurching along, ready to take out its next victim.