The Las Vegas Power Exchange sex club drug raid might not have been actually targeting the sex club.
Police have been fairly tight-lipped in the amount of information they are releasing. Appartently the warrants that were issued have been sealed, however tidbits of information recently made public by the attorneys of the Power Exchange indicate that the building is leased, and that the items taken, believed to be synthetic drugs, were removed from a separate warehouse area of the building.
The sex club’s attorney Allen Lichtenstein said,
“As far as I know it (the investigation) has nothing to do with the club.”
There is also some speculation that the recent bust might be related to a very large synthetic drug bust, that occurred in 2011, just across the street from the Power Exchange.
In that raid, hundreds of pounds of synthetic marijuana and cocaine were seized and purportedly included a $30 million dollar drug laboratory.
The location was apparently being used a distribution point and the synthetic drugs were being moved to other states.
Synthetic drugs are big business. They are produced in a laboratory and can mimic the effects of other well-known drugs. Law enforcement struggles to keep up because there are so many of these synthetic drugs, also known as “designer drugs”.
Some common synthetic drugs include bath salts and spice.
Synthetic Bath salts, not to be confused with true bath salts that are placed in a bath tub, have proven to be very dangerous and emergency rooms across the country have reported a rash of ER calls due to the ingestion of bath salts. Violence, suicide, heart attacks and organ failure have been associated with the use of bath salts.
Spice is most often marketed as a synthetic version of marijuana
Even with bans on many of the compounds used in synthetic drugs, ingredients are changed ever so slightly altering the composition of the synthetic drugs so it is a continuing problem.
Although the Power Exchange sex club drug raid may not have been targeting the sex club itself, the synthetic drug problem in Las Vegas and many other cities continues to thrive.