Dallas Police brief Public Safety Committee on dangers of K-2

Dallas Police briefed the City Council’s Public Safety Committee Feb. 22 on two important issues: K-2 synthetic marijuana and drug paraphernalia shops.

K-2 mimics the effects of Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).  Its use has significantly increased in downtown Dallas, particularly in the homeless population and specifically in the Pacific, Lamar and West End transfer station areas.

K2’s hallucinogenic effects can last 30 minutes to two hours and cause panic attacks, tachycardia, numbness and tingling, vomiting, tremors, seizures and brain damage. And it’s very inexpensive. “It’s a demand-driven drug,” Police Chief David Brown told the Committee. “It’s just so cheap.”

Responding to numerous K-2 overdoses among the homeless, DPD began a joint enforcement effort in January with Dallas Fire-Rescue, El Centro College, Code Compliance and the District Attorney’s Office. The City seized 55 individual packets of K2 and made several arrests for felony delivery of a controlled substance.

A joint operation with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) was initiated in August 2015 to levy civil actions against businesses involved in K2 distribution and other related illegal activities. Drug paraphernalia or head shops are retail outlets specializing in items used for the consumption of cannabis and tobacco. “We’ve made cases where head shops had significant amounts of K2 in them,” said Brown.

There is currently no ordinance regulating these shops, nor a definite count of how many are operating in Dallas, but DPD and DEA have seized $55 million worth of K2, $420,000 in cash and two high-end vehicles from two Dallas area head shops in the past year.

Options to address these public safety issues include new inspection components using convenience store codes as a model and the establishment of paraphernalia free zones near schools and churches.

See the full presentation to Council at http://bit.ly/1nYjCFo.