Articles Posted in Drug Offenses

In Part One of my most recent post on this subject, I outlined a recent effort in the Massachusetts Legislature to decriminalize and eventually legalize for sale psychedelic drugs.  While a good number of people might be shocked at this idea, it’s not so far-fetched.  Psychedelic drugs, also called entheogenic drugs, have been used by human beings for centuries throughout a variety of cultures, and many of these drugs produce positive physical and psychological benefits.

Psilocybin has very low toxicity and a very low potential for harm, and arresting and prosecuting people for the private use of these drugs, is not only fruitless, it is unfair and counter-productive to the criminal justice system.

Without revealing any details that would in the slightest way violate attorney-client privilege, let me explain:  A previous client of mine was arrested and prosecuted for possession of “magic mushrooms” which of course contain the active ingredient psylocibin, a hallucinogenic drug.  She was attending a concert.  She was not “dealing”, not selling the drug, not hurting anyone in the process, and certainly not hurting herself.  She was put through quite the legal and prosecutorial experience before I secured a dismissal for her, and it cost her needless personal stress and financial expense.

As pretty much anyone in Massachusetts knows, possession and use of marijuana (cannabis) has been legal here for a few years now.  It made its way to full legalization following initial decriminalization. Decriminalizing is the legislative process of removing criminal sanctions against an act or behavior, while legalizing something removes all legal prohibitions against that act or conduct.  It was a long and winding road to get to that public policy shift: Despite numerous bills to legalize cannabis being filed with the Massachusetts state legislature, wary (read: politically weak) state legislators never fully stepped up to the plate to act rationally on this issue. Ultimately the issue was put to a state ballot question in 20, and voters forced the legislature to legalize cannabis.

Now, a movement is afoot to legalize all psychedelic drugs in Massachusetts.  Clinically, these drugs are known as “entheogenic cultivated substances”:   An entheogenic is a natural, psychoactive substance that can induce changes in perception, mood, consciousness, cognition, or behavior for the purpose of actuating spiritual development.  Entheogenic substances have been used in spiritual and religious settings for centuries. contexts.  The most well-known of these types of drugs are LSD and psylocibin, the active ingredient in “magic mushrooms”.  Proponents for legalization argue that entheogenic plants have been used for centuries by a variety of cultures to address conditions that include depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, grief and the anxiety that terminally ill patients suffer, as well as disabling migraines and cluster headaches.

As a Massachusetts drug charges lawyer, I think that legalizing such drugs is a wise alternative to the failed and uneven legal approaches that have been used for more than 50 years now.  The massive failure of the “War on Drugs” has cost billions of taxpayer dollars that have been spent prosecuting millions of otherwise legally abiding citizens for possessing or using these substances.  Bearing in mind that any substance can be abused, psychedelic drugs are, at base, not usually chemically addictive, though they can be psychologically addictive.

Attorney General Maura Healey announced yesterday that a massive statewide fentanyl bust on Thursday, yielding 77 pounds of other drugs, including heroin, cocaine and opiate tablets, as well as $300,000 in cash. Law enforcement officials claimed that enough fentanyl was seized to possibly kill every person in Massachusetts. A dramatic description, for certain.

The six-month wiretap operation, conducted by a joint task force of federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents, the Massachusetts AG’s office, Boston police and other law enforcement agencies, resulted in the seizure of the drugs and the arrest of 37 separate suspects, including the alleged local kingpin, Robert Contreras of Roxbury. Contreras has been ordered held on $1 million bail on felony drug charges. The Boston Herald, quoting prosecutors, reported that evidence indicates that Contreras’ organization would receive the drugs from a much larger wholesaler, Mexico’s brutal Sinaloa cartel, them distribute them to lieutenants throughout the region, who would then supply lower-level dealers to addicts. Continue reading

As a Massachusetts drug arrest defense lawyer, I never cease to be amazed at the resistance I see to the will of the voters on the subject of marijuana legalization, from both the federal government, as well as local government here in Massachusetts.  It really is stunning.  I say this as someone who is not a recreational user of marijuana, but as an attorney who has seen far too many people’s reputations and lives damaged due to criminal accusations connected with pot use.  Equally troubling is the massive amount of taxpayer dollars that are spent on police departments and prosecutors to prosecute use of a substance that almost always involves a victimless and harmless fact pattern.

I consider the source of the federal government’s resistance to be obvious:  Big Pharma, which does not want cannabis legalized for either medicinal or recreational use.  The smple reason?  They want the public to use their drugs – the FDA “approved” drugs – for relief from pain and a whole host of physical diseases and ailments – and cannabis has been shown to provide relief from a variety of illnesses, from Parkinson’s to ALS, to cancer treatments, to anxiety.  The pharmaceutical drug companies that make their “approved” drugs, make billions of dollars through the choke-hold they have on those drugs to treat these conditions.  And they don’t want to have to compete with cannabis, and lose billions in the process. Continue reading

I’ve written on this blog previously about the Massachusetts drug lab scandal, and I tweeted earlier this week about the latest , very significant development surrounding that scandal.

This colossal mess began almost 5 years ago, with the discovery that a Massachusetts drug lab chemist, Annie Dookhan, had spent years intentionally falsifying the lab tests that were submitted to the drug lab for content analysis for use by state prosecutors in drug cases.  The cases of  approximately 20,000 Massachusetts drug defendants and drug convicts were affected by her actions.  For several years now, state and court officials have grappled with what to do with these cases and convictions, which came to be called the “Dookhan defendants.” Continue reading