Male enhancement drugs land man in prison

Decatur man to be deported after serving sentence.

A Decatur man was sentenced last week to more than five years in prison for conspiring to illegally import and distribute male enhancement pills that contain the drug found in Viagra, including pills called “Happy Passengers.”

A native of India, Ismail Ali Khan has been stripped of his U.S. citizenship and will be deported after he completes his prison sentence, U.S. attorney John Horn announced in a prepared statement Friday.

“This defendant endangered the health of countless individuals by illegally importing and distributing drugs that can be obtained in the United States only with a prescription written by a licensed, medical professional,” Horn said.

Khan, who is being held at a federal prison in Lovejoy, was also convicted and sentenced for falsely stating on his application to become a naturalized U.S. citizen that he had never committed a crime for which he had not been arrested.

That part of the naturalization process drew the attention of the U.S. Supreme Court last week, when some of the justices questioned whether the government would strip the citizenship of those who omit information about minor offenses.

Khan graduated from Kennesaw State University and had planned to enroll in medical school, said his attorney, Amanda Clark Palmer.

His attorney said Khan did not know that what he was doing was illegal and denied Khan directed suppliers to mislabel the shipping boxes containing the pills as federal prosecutors alleged.

“We had agent after agent come up and testify, and they all admitted that these pills are sold openly in convenience stores,” Clark Palmer said. “To this day, you could walk into a convenience store and buy one of these pills.”