However, the prosecution of 13 people in the Motion Research case has done absolutely nothing to curb the online sale of analogs. It hasn't even curbed the exchange of Motion Research's inventory, which some former customers are shilling online. In a February post on LegalHighGuides.com, a user was looking to unload approximately 440 mg of a drug called DALT that he claims he purchased from Motion Research. Last September, on another site, someone calling himself Eric the Man was also looking to sell his cache of Motion Research product, which he kept "refrigerated to make sure it didn't degrade."
Such shady deals are precisely why some consumers of analog drugs want them legalized and regulated. At least that's how the founder of chemsrus.com feels.
Christian Bjerk, 18, of North Dakota, died after ingesting drugs originally purchased from Motion Research.
Charles Carlton appears to have written under the name "Sandman" about his company's drugs on online forums.
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Calling himself Midas WS, the founder intends his online forum to be a "harm-reduction Web site." And unlike the moderators of some other sites, Midas was eager to answer the Press's questions about the Motion Research case and research chemicals in general.
"Unsound laws promote unsound people to run unscrupulous businesses," he writes. "Most of the new designer drugs are provided with very little information about dosage, route of administration, effects, etc., and this is where accidents and overdoses can and do happen. These legal substances are sold labeled as 'not for human consumption,' so no information can be given regarding any of this at the point of sale."
Moreover, "Very little is done to actually keep people safe. Instead, measures are made to keep people on the right side of the law, with little regard for their health."
In conclusion, he writes, "We are living in an age where information can be easily accessible, but if no information is tolerated and there are skewed laws in place that allow for no control other than putting a silly 'not for human consumption' label on products, tragedies such as the one in the 'Motion Research' case will continue to happen."
With the proliferation of online vendors, some of whom have live-chat capabilities on their sites to make buying analogs even easier, it seems Midas has a point.
In an online chat with a representative of one vendor, we wrote, "I'm interested in 25i. But I'm also a little nervous, since I'm in Texas and I was just reading about a bunch of people being busted for buying stuff from people who bought stuff off another Web site. Like, these people were so far removed from the original purchase, but they still got in trouble. So I guess I'm a little wary. Does that make sense?"
Our helpful customer service rep assured us, "You don't have to worry for anything."
The product, he wrote, would be coming from their distribution center in Richmond, Virginia, but our Western Union payment would go to their "branch in Turkey." The minimum purchase order would be 25 grams for $350.
Later we called the company on the phone and got the same rep. We again expressed our concern over the Motion Research bust, but again he assured us, "We do ship every day to Texas...to Houston, to Austin, to Dallas," and that it was "no problem." (We didn't order the stuff.)
Conceivably, Polinski and Carlton — but not the company's co-founder — could be imprisoned for the rest of their lives. But the product they sold, it seems, isn't going away.
craig.malisow@houstonpress.com