I-TEAM

Fake pot, fake cocaine still being sold with real consequences

CREATED Jul. 12, 2012 - UPDATED: Jul. 12, 2012

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  • Rob Koebel reports Video by tmj4.com

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MILWAUKEE- K2, Purple Magic, Spice, different names, different shapes and sizes all designed to do one thing: Get you high.  And that high, can be dangerous.
 
Victim: "Feel my heart rate."
Caller:  "He says he smoked some K2 and he thinks he might die".
 
Another synthetic pot case -- this one, deadly.
 
A 19-year-old was killed after smoking the fake marijuana.
 
The I-TEAM has taken you along as we busted store owners for still selling it.
 
The I-Team's Rob Koebel: "You had no idea it's against the law? It's been banned now in the state. You can get serious fines for that."
Clerk: "I don't know anything about it."
 
And showed you how Waukesha police took $25,000 worth of synthetic pot off the city streets.
 
Now the I-TEAM uncovered another dangerous synthetic drug - already here in Wisconsin.  It's called "amped."
 
"Although these substances are touted as being legal and safe they are anything but," said DEA Agent Robert Bell.
 
Amped is a white powdery substance being sold in small packages in stores and online.   A recovering amped addict says she used to snort it like cocaine.  She claims, while on it, she lost her mind.
 
"To want to actually physically kill someone.  I've never been that way towards my mom we've always been best friends and she didn't know who I was and I didn't know who I was," said the woman.
 
But the rush kept her coming back for more.
 
"You do it, it's really, really, really hyper and then you want some more and then you do it again and you want some more.  The package says it never lets you down."
 
In a Skype interview -- DEA Special Agent Robert Bell says shutting these companies down isn't easy because they are constantly changing the ingredients in an attempt to avoid federally banned substances.
 
"I will just simply call them drug peddlers - are selling substances intended for human use," said Bell.
 
In an emergency meeting -- the feds were able to add eight more substances to a growing list of banned items.  Five from the synthetic pot category and three from the bath salt class.
 
And the ban came too late for one Wisconsin teen.
 
In May 2010, 19-year-old Charlie Davel toots his horn at a Mukwonago cop who has a driver pulled over.   A few minutes later Davel would lead police on a high speed chase through Waukesha County.
 
"He is going the wrong way - he almost hit my squad as he headed down the on ramp.  7 is directly behind him now we have vehicles headed this way," said the sheriff's deputy.
 
Investigators would later learn Davel --  a recent Waukesha West graduate smoked K2 before the chase -- a chase that turned deadly.
 
"We have an accident -- the vehicle has struck the A M towing vehicle," said the deputy.
 
Detective Steve Pederson is with the Waukesha County Sheriff's Department.  He is no stranger to these drugs.
 
"Personally I think anything that you could ingest that's not prescribed by a physician and has an altering effect on the mind is very dangerous," said Pederson.
 
And those dangers never more apparent than the deadly crash.