Karen Dobner
told the Daily News she’s called Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) 15 times to
tell him about her son Max’s death last year — and to beg him to let the
ban come up for a vote. She never got a call back.
“He’s got blood on his hands,” Dobner said.
Even as she mourns the loss of a boy she says was the perfect son
before he naively tried iAroma or synthetic pot, Dobner is angry that
Paul is putting his libertarian principles before the lives of young
people.
And she says she won’t let him get away with killing a bill that the
House of Representatives has already green-lighted and the majority of
senators are ready to pass.
Paul put a hold on the bill — a perogative any individual senator can
exercise — three months ago. “I told his aides he cannot survive
politically if he keeps stalling this. We will not let it go,” said
Dobner, a mother of three from Aurora, Ill. “Anything else he does will
be publicized by us. Every time somebody dies we will hold him
accountable.”
Dobner started a foundation called To The Maximus to bring public
attention to the emerging danger of synthetic drugs masquerading as
“herbal” and “natural” highs.
She has also started a blog and newsletter to alert parents and teens
to the unpredictable and harrowing effects of smoking or inhaling the
chemically sprayed leaves.
On Wednesday, Paul told The News he might be willing to release his
hold and allow a vote to proceed if there were some changes in the
proposed legislation. “We are concerned about people being put in jail
for 20 years for marijuana,” Paul said.
Max Dobner died June 14 after he bought a $12 packet of iAroma at the
local mall. Within 15 minutes of smoking it, he phoned his older brother
to say he was having a panic attack and was freaking out, his mother
said.
Dobner, a college student, got into his 1999 Chrysler and drove 100 mph
on neighborhood roads until he crashed into and destroyed a suburban
home, the car lodged inside a baby’s empty bedroom.
He was pulled from the crash, dead from blunt head trauma. The autopsy
found the signature chemicals used to make synthetic marijuana, his
mother said.
“He was my everything,” Dobner sobbed. “He was always the responsible
child, the conscientious one. The one who wanted to make the world a
better place. I never would have imagined this.”
Photo from the car accident that killed Max Dobner.
Emergency calls to poison centers about synthetic pot have skyrocketed around the country in the past three years, from 13 in 2009 to more than 2,900 in 2010 and more than 6,900 in 2011.
Some states have attempted to ban the chemicals used, but manufacturers
— who operate in the shadows — get around the prohibition by tweaking
the compounds so they are no longer covered by the ban. “How did this
happen right under our noses?” asked Dobner. “Kids are having seizures.
There are so many horrible stories out there.”
After Max’s death, Dobner, 50, set out to learn everything she could
about synthetic drugs to get the word out. She moved into his room and
has become a one-woman town crier.
“I would be rolled up in a ball crying every day if I wasn’t doing this,” she said.
“It didn’t take me long to find out about this poison that these nasty,
greedy people are trying to sell to our kids and skimming the laws.
They don’t care that kids are dying.”
Law enforcement is still learning about the shadowy nether world of
synthetic marijuana. A spokesman for the DEA said that the chemicals are
imported here from China in powder form. They are then mixed with
acetone — common nail polish remover — and sprayed on plant leaves and
packaged for stores to sell.
There is no way to know how much of the mind-altering chemical is
sprayed on the leaves, and so dosage varies from package to package.
There is no way to know how much or what you are inhaling, experts said.
One teenager told an interviewer, “I felt like my head was coming off
and floating away.”
In just the last two weeks alone, two more deaths were blamed on synthetic pot.
A 17-year-old boy whose family said he was high on it fatally stabbed a sleeping schoolmate, Jasmyn Tully, 17, in Washington State because he felt “an urge to hurt someone,” authorities said.
And on Sunday, police outside Atlanta were investigating the death of a
teenager whose body was found in a hot tub. Chase Burnett, 16, an honor
student and junior varsity soccer player, was found by his father, who
said his son had smoked synthetic marijuana known as “Spice.”
Original Article
Source: ny daily news
Author: Heidi Evans
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