Author Archives: Jay Butchko
Drug Charges Incidental to Social Media Stunts
Every seasoned pothead knows that the best way to avoid getting criminal charges for drugs is to keep your drug use safely concealed in the privacy of your home. As long as you smoke weed while sitting on the couch in your living room, or in the couch of your drug buddy’s living room,… Read More »
What If You and the Prosecution Disagree About Whether You Intended to Distribute the Drugs in Your Possession?
Drug possession is far from the worst criminal charge you can face. Many counties in Florida, including Orange County, have drug court programs, which are pretrial diversion programs for drug possession cases. If you do not have any prior convictions, then drug court gives you the chance to get your charges dropped by entering… Read More »
Florida DMT Laws
People’s accounts of their psychedelic experiences under the influence of hallucinogenic or entheogenic drugs tend to share some common tropes, despite that these experiences have occurred on every inhabited continent and across centuries. They report feeling like they traveled to other worlds, either in the flesh or outside their bodies. Some of them see… Read More »
7-OH May Remain in Florida’s Legal Drug Supply Even After Its Classification as a Schedule I Controlled Substance
Some of the most dangerous drugs in the world are legal for medical use in the United States, at least in theory. Fentanyl has caused more overdose deaths in recent years than any other drug; it has become a byword for the deadliest wave of the decades-old opioid addiction epidemic. Despite this, it is… Read More »
Legal Possession of Cannabis Can Still Mean Criminal Charges for Drugged Driving
Just as young people today will never know the joy of receiving the gift of a mixtape of songs your friend taped off the radio, they will also never know the thrill of trying to argue that you have not been smoking weed, against all evidence to the contrary. My eyes are red because… Read More »
19 Floridians Face Drug Trafficking Charges Because of Anonymous Letter
Anonymous documents are great for causing a scandal, but they do not prove much. Remember how much chaos the anonymous Burn Book causes in the movie Mean Girls? Before the age of clickbait, a tried-and-true way to get famous was to publish outrageous claims anonymously. The public would then set about trying to find… Read More »
Ketamine Overdoses on the Rise in Florida
Ketamine is a widely used sedative drug, both in medical settings and in a recreational context. It is not the scariest drug around; media personalities and lonely sharers of online content who get their kicks by instilling fear in people about various drugs would have an easier time casting vape pens as the bogeyman… Read More »
The Youthful Offenders Act and Your Florida Drug Case
If you are going to get arrested for drug possession or another drug-related crime, the time to do it is when you are young. The law acknowledges that young people are in a better position than their older counterparts to learn from their mistakes. This is why there is a whole separate juvenile justice… Read More »
Informant Testimony Is Not Infallible
Accepting a plea deal in a drug case is nothing out of the ordinary; more than 90 percent of defendants in criminal cases plead guilty. If you have been on this Earth long enough to catch a criminal case, then you are old enough to know that nothing in life is free. There is… Read More »
Medetomidine Is Not Just for Catnaps and Doggie Dreams Anymore
Watching Nickelodeon in Florida in the 1980s and early 1990s was a fever dream to say the least. Its weirdness appealed to a child’s sense of wonder as much as it did to a pothead’s appetite for snacks and giggles. The shows and commercials were just the right mix of hilarious and unsettling, but… Read More »
