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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. I'm June Grosso. Every

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Speaker 1: day we bring you inside an analysis into the most

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Speaker 1: important legal news of the day. You can find more

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Speaker 1: episodes of the Bloomberg Law Podcast on Apple podcast, SoundCloud

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Speaker 1: and on Bloomberg dot com slash podcasts. It's a bizarre

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Speaker 1: true crime story that even the defendants to film producers

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Speaker 1: would find difficult to script. The producers could spend the

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Speaker 1: rest of their lives in prison for selling synthetic drugs,

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Speaker 1: but they swear the stuff they sold was illegal, and

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Speaker 1: even a chemist, a former top d e A agent, agrees.

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Speaker 1: The problem is he's now locked up to joining us

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Speaker 1: for this Bloomberg Law exclusive story America's Secret Drug Wars

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Speaker 1: is Jordan Reuben. Bloomberg Law Legal editor. Jordan begin by

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Speaker 1: telling us about Charles Burton Ritchie and his enterprises. Sure, so,

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Speaker 1: Charles Burton Ritchie is an interesting character. He started opening

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Speaker 1: up a head shop in the early nineties and Pencil

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Speaker 1: Florida called the Psychedelic Shock, and he'd call himself a

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Speaker 1: serial entrepreneur, and that's really true in every sense of

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Speaker 1: the word. The problem is, one of his enterprises was

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Speaker 1: dealing in synthetic cannabinoids. Now, this is sort of a

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Speaker 1: murky legal area and it's unclear what exactly is legal

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Speaker 1: or illegal. And the problem is that the Department of

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Speaker 1: Justice called that particular enterprise a multimillion dollars synthetic marijuana ring,

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Speaker 1: and now he and his partner, Bengalecki are facing decades

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Speaker 1: in prison. What are the problems with the broad scope

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Speaker 1: of the law that bans the sale of analog designer drugs. Sure, so,

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Speaker 1: obviously we all know that drugs like cocaine, heroin, things

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Speaker 1: like that are illegal. That's simple enough. The problem is

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Speaker 1: that enterprising chemists and dealers will sort of just tweak

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Speaker 1: a molecule to make a drug slightly different than the

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Speaker 1: compound that's illegal, and so that presents a big problem

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Speaker 1: for law enforcement trying to keep up with this synthetic

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Speaker 1: drug craze. And so in an effort to combat that,

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Speaker 1: there's a law called the Federal Analog Act, and that's

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Speaker 1: from the nineteen eighties, which says that if you're selling

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Speaker 1: a drug that's quote unquote substantially similar to an already

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Speaker 1: illegal compound, then you're on the hook as if you

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Speaker 1: sold that illegal compound. The problem is the term substantially similar,

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Speaker 1: defendants say is too vague to give them notice of

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Speaker 1: what's illegal. And so that's how you get into arguments

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Speaker 1: like in the Ritchie and Galecki case where they say

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Speaker 1: they were essentially blindsided by charges and they were trying

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Speaker 1: to live within the law, and there were times when

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Speaker 1: they invited government agents to come look at their drugs.

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Speaker 1: Basically right like you said, it would almost have been

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Speaker 1: difficult for them to script. So there's a big raid

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Speaker 1: in two thousand twelve, a nationwide raid on synthetic substances

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Speaker 1: called Operation log Jam, And after one of their facilities

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Speaker 1: was rated, they reached out to the d e A.

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Speaker 1: Burton Ritchie reached out and he got a d e

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Speaker 1: A agent, Claude Cozy, to come and inspect their Florida facility.

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Speaker 1: He gave them samples of the product and he said, hey, look,

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Speaker 1: if you're telling me what I'm doing is illegal, I'll

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Speaker 1: close up shop today. That didn't happen, and nonetheless, though

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Speaker 1: the defendants found themselves getting indicted in multiple federal districts.

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Speaker 1: Years later, two trials in Virginia, one ended in a

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Speaker 1: hung jury, the other in convictions. What happened at trial. So,

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Speaker 1: as you mentioned, there were multiple trials in Virginia. As

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Speaker 1: it turns out, the first jury, the reason that there

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Speaker 1: was a hung jury is because the jurors had difficulty

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Speaker 1: sorting out this issue of whether the drug was substantially

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Speaker 1: similar or not. So it's a situation where it's this

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Speaker 1: kind of difficult scientific question, but ultimately it's up to

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Speaker 1: a jury without any scientific expertise prior to make this

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Speaker 1: seemingly scientific determination. And so in that first trial in Virginia,

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Speaker 1: the jury said, we can't agree on this, and so

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Speaker 1: there was a mistrial declared. Then in the second trial,

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Speaker 1: the jurors actually had some difficulty with the issue as well,

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Speaker 1: but ultimately they did wind up returning guilty verdicts and

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Speaker 1: the defendants were sentenced there too, about thirty years each.

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Speaker 1: And those were convictions that were actually just recently overturned

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Speaker 1: by the Court of Appeals that covers Virginia. But the

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Speaker 1: defendants are not even close to out of the woods yet,

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Speaker 1: because they were just convicted in another trial in Las Vegas.

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Speaker 1: It went up and down to the Fourth Circuit in

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Speaker 1: the issue in here went to the Supreme Court. Are

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Speaker 1: other people having the same kinds of problems with this

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Speaker 1: law that they are. Yes, So there's pending appeal in

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Speaker 1: New York Federal Court, the second Circuit Court of Appeals

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Speaker 1: that covers New York, where there's a lawyer who's trying

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Speaker 1: to take down this analog law itself, saying the law

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Speaker 1: is too vague, that it doesn't give fair notice, similar

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Speaker 1: to the argument that defendants all over the country are making.

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Speaker 1: And so that's an appeal that we're going to be

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Speaker 1: watching very closely to see if that's a case that

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Speaker 1: winds up going further up on the appeal chain and

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Speaker 1: perhaps winds up getting this law stricken down. So Jordan's

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Speaker 1: the government usually has schedules of drugs. Why aren't there

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Speaker 1: lists of what constitutes synthetic analog drug that's illegal. So

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Speaker 1: if you ask the government, what they would say is

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Speaker 1: it's impossible to publish a continually accurate list because new

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Speaker 1: compounds are getting added all of the time, and so

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Speaker 1: therefore a list would necessarily be incomplete. Defendants, on the

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Speaker 1: other hand, say, even if it's an incomplete list, that

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Speaker 1: would have been better than nothing, because in the case,

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Speaker 1: for example, like the Burton Ritchie case, what they say anyway,

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Speaker 1: is if the government had told them ahead of time

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Speaker 1: that this particular compound that they had sold was illegal,

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Speaker 1: they would have gotten out of the business that day.

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Speaker 1: And so there's certainly differing arguments on this, and it's

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Speaker 1: just a question from the defendant's view of essentially, for

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Speaker 1: people trying to live within the law, whether the government

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Speaker 1: can help them do that. The government, on the other hand, says,

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Speaker 1: essentially that's a difficult argument to take with a straight face.

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Speaker 1: You know, you're doing something that's kind of shady, and

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Speaker 1: it's sort of on you if you wind up getting

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Speaker 1: prosecuted in the end. So, adding to how bizarre this is,

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Speaker 1: you have a chemist who was a former top d

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Speaker 1: E A agent agreeing with them, but now he's in prison.

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Speaker 1: So that's another truly bizarre twist on this story. So

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Speaker 1: Arthur Barrier was a senior d E, a chemist. He

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Speaker 1: was really the d E a S top expert in

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Speaker 1: this special lab that was on top of the synthetic issue.

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Speaker 1: As this synthetic drug craze was really heating up, Arthur

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Speaker 1: Barrier would be the one who would review whether new

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Speaker 1: compounds could qualify as substantially similar under this analog law.

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Speaker 1: And the government was not forthcoming with this information to

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Speaker 1: defendants who were prosecuted under the law, at least at first.

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Speaker 1: But once word got out that there was this d E,

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Speaker 1: a chemist who disagreed with his own colleagues about whether

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Speaker 1: certain drugs should be illegal under the analog law, then

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Speaker 1: defendants wanted him to testify for them. Of course, because

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Speaker 1: if you're a defendant and you say, hey, I can

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Speaker 1: call this government witness who obliterates the government's own case.

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Speaker 1: Now that was true. But just as this was starting

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Speaker 1: to happen, this same chemist, Arthur Barrier, was arrested in

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Speaker 1: the summer of having nothing to do with drugs. But

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Speaker 1: he was arrested in a different sort of law enforcement takedown,

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Speaker 1: one targeting people who solicit miners online for sex. And

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Speaker 1: so now he's in jail just like the people he

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Speaker 1: used to help the d E a takedown. Well, it's

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Speaker 1: a fascinating story. We don't have time for all of it,

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Speaker 1: but you can read it. It's a Bloomberg Law exclusive story,

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Speaker 1: America's secret drug wars. That's Jordan Reuben, Bloomberg Law Legal Editor.

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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can

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Speaker 1: subscribe and listen to the show on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud,

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Speaker 1: and on bloomberg dot com slash podcast. I'm June Brosso.

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Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg