Bizarro
The Surreal Saga of America's Secret War on Synthetic Drugs and the Florida Kingpins It Captured
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
Inside a drug war so screwy that people don’t know what’s illegal—until it’s too late.
Bizarro is a page-turning tale of the unprecedented prosecution of Burton Ritchie and Ben Galecki, the Florida-based founders of a sprawling “spice” (synthetic cannabinoid) operation. With this book, journalist and former New York City narcotics prosecutor Jordan S. Rubin exposes a Reagan-era law called the Analogue Act, which targets dealers selling drugs that are “substantially similar” to controlled substances—an unwieldy law that produces erratic results in court.
Rubin brings readers deep inside the synthetic war, exploring how Ritchie and Galecki landed in its crosshairs and why one of the DEA’s own chemists may have been their best chance at freedom, until he was arrested too. This stranger-than-fiction narrative is backed by thousands of pages of court records and exclusive interviews with defendants, lawyers, law enforcement, celebrities, and more. Bizarro reveals the world of underground chemists making drugs faster than the government can ban them, dealers making millions in a gray market, and a justice system run amok.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist and former prosecutor Rubin debuts with a colorful and distressing study of the 1986 Analogue Act, which bans substances that have "either a chemical structure or intended effect ‘substantially similar' to a controlled substance." Delving into the process behind declaring a drug illicit, Rubin explains that frustrations with "underground chemists and dealers" who modified their recipes to stay one step ahead of the law, coupled with the rise of crack cocaine in the 1980s, led to a series of reforms including the Analogue Act, which preemptively outlawed any drug similar to those listed on Schedules I and II of the 1970 Controlled Substances Act. From there, Rubin turns to the case of Burton Richie and Benjamin Galecki, cofounders of Zencense, which manufactured and distributed a product called "spice," whose main ingredient was synthetic cannabinoids. Though Richie and Galecki paid taxes, avoided the use of banned chemicals, and initially cooperated with the DEA, they were arrested in 2015 and sentenced to 32 and 28 years in prison, respectively. While Rubin acknowledges the ill effects of synthetic drugs, he forcefully critiques the unscientific nature of the government's "substantial-similarity test" and raises noteworthy alarm bells about recent efforts to "supercharge" the Analogue Act in the fight against illicit fentanyl. It's a fascinating case study of America's drug laws. Photos.