Mobile drug bust: ‘Everything is packaged to attract children’
By Web staff
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MOBILE, Alabama (WALA) — Police on Wednesday laid out the fruits of a drug bust last week – 86 pounds of high-grade marijuana, THC-laced vaping material and a large number of candy bars made with the drug.
The haul filled up a large U-shaped table in a conference room at police headquarters. Police Chief Paul Prine said the street value of the drugs totals $257,000. In addition, police seized $23,000 in cash.
“This was a great bust for the city of Mobile because this will not go out to the streets where our children are,” Prine told reporters.
Prine said one man is responsible – Howard Ronald Marks Jr., whom police arrested Friday on a marijuana trafficking charge.
The arrest was the culmination of a weeks-long investigation and included raids at two houses in west Mobile, Prine said. He said police executed a search warrant at a house on Indian Trail Drive. That led to a second raid, at Marks’ personal residence on Tower Drive.
Prine pointed specifically to the candy.
“Everything is packaged to attract children,” he said.
Law enforcement authorities have warned about drugs disguised as candy before. Last summer, police found marijuana and edibles containing THC designed as candy. Police arrested Dominic C. Davis, whose case awaits review by a grand jury.
Marks, 36, has a lengthy criminal history and was on parole for third-degree robbery and manufacturing a controlled substance, the chief said.
Although he could not immediately provide specific examples, Prine said the seemingly less serious marijuana is intertwined with violence.
“A lot of people would say that marijuana maybe isn’t that significant of a drug,” he said. “But at the end of day, it’s the gateway to a lot of violent crimes that you see in our cities, and certainly to more harder drugs.”
Marks had a bond hearing at Mobile County Metro Jail on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday on Monday and is scheduled to have a bail review hearing Friday in Mobile County District Court. He remains jailed without bond.
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