Senate committee takes up drugs, bong water

Four bills intended to beef up Minnesota’s drug laws were passed by the Senate Judiciary and Public Safety committee on Thursday. The bills would change laws related to bong water and make synthetic marijuana and 2C-E illegal substances. The measures seek to address high profile controversies over the last two years, including the case of a woman who was sentenced to prison because the state Supreme Court ruled bong water to be a drug, the death of a Blaine teen in which 2C-E was suspected and the hospitalization of a Hastings teen after he smoked synthetic marijuana.

Sen. Carla Nelson, R-Rochester, spoke in support of the ban on synthetic marijuana. “Residents get these [drugs] off the shelves in our stores,” she said. “They are not harmless.”

Olmsted County Attorney Mark Ostrem testified that marijuana and synthetic marijuana are gateway drugs.

“I’ve often called marijuana a gateway drug that leads to cocaine use” and other drugs, he said. “[Types of synthetic marijuana] are far more dangerous. These drugs compared to the active ingredients in marijuana, THC, are much more potent.”

In 2010, a Hastings teen ended up in the hospital after smoking synthetic marijuana.

Sen. Sandy Pappas, DFL-St. Paul, testified in support of changing the law to exclude bong water from prosecution “except in cases where the mixture contains four or more fluid ounces of fluid.” In 2009, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that law enforcement could use bong water to prosecute a woman by classifying bong water as the same as a controlled substance.

It passed the legislature unanimously in 2010, but was vetoed by Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who bragged about the veto on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show.

John Kingrey of the Minnesota County Attorneys Association said his organization opposes the bill. “Our concern is that drug dealers could put meth in water and transport it.”

But, Kurt Hanna of the Minnesota chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws said the law was a good one. “I’m here to speak on behalf of bong users in Minnesota,” he told the committee. “I watched Gov. Pawlenty speak about his veto on The Daily Show… I don’t believe it is a very fair sort of system” to prosecute drug users with bong water.

Sen. Dan Hall, R-Burnsville, offered a bill that would ban 2C-E and 2C-I.

Cody Wiberg of the state pharmacy board said his group is having difficulty keeping up with new “designer” drugs.

He noted the death of a teen in Blaine and the hospitalization of 10 more teens after ingesting 2C-E.

“This is really the forth time in the last two years that the board has become aware of substances like this,” he said. “We are forever going to be chasing after the next drug.”

He said the bill was modeled after the analog provision in the Federal Analogs Act.

All three bills passed and will be included in an omnibus drug policy bill.