The Most Dangerous Designer Drugs

Designer drugs have become more popular throughout the United States and in North Carolina. Law enforcement officials have a difficult time keeping up with all of the new types of designer drugs because chemists create the drugs faster than North Carolina lawmakers can regulate them. Nonetheless, North Carolina law enforcement officers and prosecutors continue to bring designer drug charges.

The efforts to fight designer drug use are motivated by how dangerous certain designer drugs can be to users. If you are facing criminal designer drug charges in Charlotte, you need a skilled defense lawyer. Contact Arnold & Smith, PLLC as soon as possible to schedule your free, initial consultation.

Popular designer drugs include Molly, Bath Salts, MDMA, and more. One of the most dangerous designer drugs is called gray death. Law enforcement officers in Louisiana recently reported that the super drug called gray death is rapidly increasing in popularity. For several years, the drug has been on the black market. However, officials are only recently beginning to warn people not to touch or inhale the drug.

Gray death is a mixture of heroin and fentanyl. With a potency more than 10,000 times greater than morphine, merely touching or inhaling the drug can cause serious health problems. Samples of gray death include U-47700, a designer drug, opioids, and heroin. Users take the drugs by smoking it, snorting it, injecting it, or swallowing it. Law enforcement officers often carry Narcan to counteract overdoses from gray death.

North Carolina law enforcement takes drug possession charges very seriously. Those convicted of drug possession charges face heavy fines and prison sentences. They also must live with a criminal record that can negatively affect the individual’s ability to become hired in certain jobs. The severity of the penalties for designer drug possession depends on the type of drug charges brought by prosecutors.

Prosecutors will bring an unwitting designer drug possession case when the defendant actually possessed the drug but was unaware that she was in possession of the drugs. For example, if a person placed a bag of gray death in the defendant’s backpack without the defendant’s knowledge, he or she may face unwitting possession charges. Defendants can also face constructive possession charges for designer drugs. Constructive possession occurs when the defendant has drugs in his or her workplace or vehicle that are not found on his or her person.

One of the best defenses against designer drug possession charges is a lack of possession. This defense is useful when prosecutors cannot prove that the defendant had the ability to possess or control the drugs. In order to secure a conviction, the prosecution must prove that the defendant had dominion and control over the drugs. For example, if law enforcement pulls a car over and discovers designer drugs on the floor of the vehicle and there were four passengers in the vehicle, prosecutors may not be able to prove who had dominion and possession over the drugs.

Another common defense is that the crime lab wrongly analyzed the designer drugs. The prosecutors have the duty to prove that the substance law enforcement officers seized was an illegal drug. In the area of designer drugs, it can be difficult for crime labs to conclusively prove that the drugs are illicit.

Further, in order to use evidence of the drugs in a trial, the prosecutor must prove that the evidence had an undisturbed chain of custody. If the crime lab lost the drug sample at any point, the defense may be able to prove a break in the chain of evidence and ask the judge to throw the evidence out.

Finally, law enforcement officers may have engaged in an unlawful search or seizure when they seized the designer drugs. The criminal defense attorneys at Arnold & Smith, PLLC have extensive experience analyzing issues such as wrongful search and seizure.

Your future may seem bleak when you face designer drug charges. However, you are not alone when fighting for your rights as a defendant. The Charlotte designer drug lawyers at Arnold & Smith, PLLC can help. Contact our Charlotte drug defense law firm today to schedule your free initial consultation and learn how our lawyers can help you throughout the process.