Court settles case over when synthetic drugs were made illegal

A Warren County convicted drug dealer lost his appeal before the Ohio Supreme Court on Tuesday over when the state outlawed synthetic drugs, such as Spice and K2.

The Ohio Supreme Court ruled that synthetic drugs were made illegal under state law as early as October 2011, even though they weren’t specifically named in law when defendant Hamza Shalash was arrested and indicted for selling them in 2011 and early 2012.

Shalash was indicted in May 2012 on multiple counts of trafficking in Spice and K2, which are synthetic substances similar to marijuana. Shalash was convicted in March 2013 for selling the substances from a Lebanon gas station he co-owned. He was sentenced to 11 years in prison.

He appealed his conviction, arguing that the sale of synthetic drugs wasn’t made illegal until December 2012 — after his arrest. The 12th District Court of Appeals overturned his conviction and sent the case back to the trial court, which denied his motion to dismiss the case and Shalash pleaded no contest to the charges and he was found guilty again.

But the case highlighted a conflict between appeals court rulings in the 12th and 10th Districts.

The Ohio General Assembly passed laws in October 2011 and December 2012 addressing synthetic controlled substances. The Ohio Supreme Court decided that the law passed in October 2011 clearly mandated that synthetics should be treated as controlled substances.

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