Grand Jury to Tackle Flakka Scourge in Fla.

Aug. 20--Flakka has a stranglehold on Broward County and State Attorney Mike Satz is turning to a grand jury to devise a clampdown.

Starting next month, grand jurors will conduct an inquiry into synthetic drugs with a specific focus on flakka, a crystalline substance that can be snorted, swallowed, smoked, vaped or injected and has contributed to 33 deaths in Broward County in the last 10 months.

"People are taking this poison and becoming zombies and they're dying," Satz said. "It's a problem."

Broward led the nation last year in the number of flakka cases analyzed in crime labs. Emergency rooms across the county are treating up to 20 flakka-related emergencies a day. The drug has spawned numerous arrests and freakish incidents, including a man who impaled himself on a security spike while trying to scale a fence.

The Broward State Attorney's Office has seen a nearly sevenfold increase in the number of flakka-related felonies it filed this year compared to last year.

In the first seven months of 2014, the agency filed 78 flakka-related felonies. The tally so far this year: 524, said Ron Ishoy, the office's spokesman.

"It's everywhere," said Assistant State Attorney Tony Loe who will lead the presentation to the grand jury. "We've not experienced anything of this magnitude."

Known as alpha-PVP in the overseas laboratories where its made, grand jurors will study its use, effects, distribution and overall impact on the community. They'll also hear testimony from drug and substance-abuse experts and first responders, including police, paramedics and emergency room staff.

At the end of its six-month term in January, the 21-member grand jury will issue a report and recommendations on how to curb the flakka problem.

"The recommendations could be across the board, from legislation, to treatment suggestions to trafficking enforcement," Ishoy said.

Turning to a grand jury is an approach Satz has taken before with other community scourges, most recently pill mills.

In November 2009, a Broward grand jury issued a damming report bemoaning lax state laws that had allowed storefront clinics to set up shop and dole out prescription pain pills for cash.

It suggested 18 reforms, many of which eventually became law, including preventing pain clinics from distributing drugs on site, limiting prescriptions from pain clinics to no more than a three-day supply to barring people with criminal records from owning pain clinics.

Grand juries typically hear first-degree murder cases to decide if the accused should be indicted. In Broward County, they also review all fatal police shootings to determine if it was a legal use of deadly force.

One logical step toward curbing the flakka problem would be to create a state law that carries heavy sanctions for trafficking alpha-PVP, Loe said.

Although it's currently illegal to buy, sell or possess flakka, or alpha-PVP, in the United States, it is easily bought online from overseas labs and pharmaceutical companies primarily based in China. Florida now has no state law specific to trafficking the drug.

"We can't really slam somebody for putting this poison out in our community," Loe said. "It's illegal, it's a crime, you get punished for it, but there's no teeth ... there are no sanctions like with other drugs to try to eliminate it."

tealanez@tribpub.com, 954-356-4542 or Twitter @talanez

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