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“This was not just someone putting together something in the bathroom,” she said following a series of raids in the city of Passaic.
Authorities also hit locations in Paramus and Montville, as well as four separate storage units in Fort Lee and Lodi, she said.
The haul included 2,000 packaged packets of synthetic pot, along with 500,000 empty packets, lab tools and equipment following a seven-month undercover investigation involving the federal Drug Enforcement Agency and Passaic and NJ State Police, said Valdes, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney.They also seized 32,290 male enhancement pills, she said.
Those charged: Guadalupe Navarro-Martinez, 26, of Paterson, Heeru Nandwani, 35, of Paramus, Bong Kang, 48, of Montville and Harris Khan, 28, of Staten Island.
Khan and Nandwani were charged with operating the facility and ordered held in the Passaic County Jail on $150,000 bail each. Navarro-Martinez and Kang were charged with conspiracy and ordered held on $75,000 bail each.
State authorities three years ago began cracking down on convenience stores, head shops and boardwalk novelty stores that sold “Spice,” “Black Mamba,” “Kush” and other forms of synthetic pot after users committed suicide or suffered fatal injuries as a result of extreme panic attacks, they said.
On the market more than a decade now, synthetic pot has become the third-most commonly abused drug by high school seniors after marijuana and prescription drugs, the National Institute on Drug Abuse says.
It is classified as a Schedule I Controlled Dangerous Substance in New Jersey. That means fines and possible prison terms.
Sold under names such as “K2” or “K3,” “Down to Earth” and “Comatose Candy,” it's made of herbs and plant materials coated with chemicals that simulate the high produced by pot’s psychoactive ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).
The chemicals, in some cases four to five times more powerful than THC, were first developed for research – and labeled as not intended for human consumption -- in the mid 90s.
Side effects have included violent seizures, dangerously elevated heart rates, anxiety attacks and hallucinations.
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