Recent Blog Posts
Sheriff’s Deputies Bust DMT Lab Near Middle School
Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) is the edgiest plant-based substance you have never heard of, but its presence is well enough established that federal and state laws classify it as a Schedule I controlled substance. DMT is one of the active ingredients in ayahuasca, the entheogenic drink that has been consumed by the peoples of the Amazon… Read More »
Can You Reduce Your Prison Time After a Drug Conviction?
After meeting with a criminal defense lawyer about a recent drug arrest, the first thing that most defendants do is Google the penalties for the charge that they will likely face, or the charge that their lawyer wants to negotiate for in a plea deal; they want to know what they are accepting if… Read More »
How Bad Is It to Serve a Sentence in a Minimum-Security Prison?
If you are young enough to have spent your youth awash in on demand video content on YouTube and Netflix but young enough that you have an attention span longer than a Tik Tok video, then perhaps you have seen those documentaries about prison that are meant to scare risk-taking teens out of breaking… Read More »
What Would a CIA-Like Intelligence Agency in Florida Mean for Drug Crime Cases?
When children play games involving criminal investigations and law enforcement, they tend to assume that there is only one police force; it is just the police against the criminals. Police procedural dramas and action movies about outlaws also tend to oversimplify the law enforcement process. When you read news stories about criminal cases, or… Read More »
What If Only Some of the Pills in Your Pill Bottle Were Prescribed to You?
In many ways, the New Year’s Eve arrest of Frank Venegas in Collier County on drug charges was just a typical day. You might even call it a stereotypical Florida incident. Venegas, 24, is one of the two performers who post videos of their music on Tik Tok under the stage name “Island Boys,”… Read More »
Field Tests of Alleged Controlled Substances Leave Room for Reasonable Doubt
Conventional wisdom says that, when police pull you over on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, you should give as little evidence as the law requires. If the police ask to search your vehicle, do not consent. Even if the police do collect evidence after arresting you, there is room… Read More »
A Kilogram of E Is Even More Incriminating When a Child Is Present
Some drugs never go out of style, while others are most popular with a certain generation. Baby Boomers assumed that cocaine was harmless, boasting about it in popular songs and edgy comedy routines, at least until John Belushi overdosed in the early 1980s. If we are to believe elderly journalists, the kids of Generation… Read More »
Police Arrest Man for Illegal Possession of Drugs and Sea Turtle Eggs
The average person’s swimming skills in Florida are higher than what one finds in most parts of the world, but even experienced swimmers will admit that walking comes more naturally to humans than swimming. If you go to the contiguous beaches of South Florida, you can easily start on Fort Lauderdale Beach and walk… Read More »
The Executive Order Rescheduling Cannabis Will Have Little Effect on Criminal Law
In December 2025, President Trump signed an executive order instructing federal lawmakers to reschedule cannabis, changing it from a Schedule I controlled substance to a Schedule III controlled substance. Discussions about rescheduling cannabis are nothing new; they are at least as old as statewide medical marijuana programs. Every year during the previous presidential administration,… Read More »
School Custodian Faces Charges for Drug Possession
If you are too old to find the phrase “six seven” entertaining, then you probably get a kick out of droning, “Drugs are bad,” in a faux old person voice. It is in school where many of us first heard adults whom the generation above us would have described as “square” scold us about… Read More »
