When you think about drug conspiracies, you might think of high-budget television shows. Several of the most critically-acclaimed and popular television shows on cable and streaming platforms in the last decade have focused on drug trafficking and drug conspiracies.
You may picture organized criminals or gang members holding brutal meetings, but drug conspiracy can be as simple as a promise to perform a task for someone else. If you supply even legally available items to individuals manufacturing or trafficking drugs, you could find yourself charged with federal drug conspiracy crimes.
Legal items can lead to major charges
If someone who doesn’t have a child or run a daycare asks you to pick them up several containers of infant formula whenever you go to the store, you may not think twice about it. They reimburse you with cash, and it is not an inconvenience. Whatever they do with the formula after you buy it doesn’t really matter to you.
You might feel the same way about grabbing a few boxes of cold medicine whenever you go to the store. Even though you have to write your name down and provide state identification to make the purchase, you know that a few boxes at once aren’t the same thing as buying dozens. You don’t intend to use the medication, so you don’t worry about making regular purchases of something that is perfectly legal.
What you may not understand is that if the person that you shop for uses those products to package, dilute or manufacture a drug, you could wind up implicated in their broader criminal conspiracy.
You don’t have to handle drugs to be part of the conspiracy
Maybe you have an idea about what your friend uses that cold medicine for, but you don’t think much of it because they haven’t asked you to break the law. You don’t make any profit from your assistance, or it’s only a few dollars a time if you do, so you assume there’s no risk to you.
However, you don’t have to personally handle or distribute illegal drugs to play a role in their creation and trafficking in the eyes of the law. Your relatively innocent shopping activities might play an important role in a drug conspiracy. You need to be able to identify those risks to avoid unintentionally breaking the law.
Knowing what might lead to federal drug charges can help you stay safe or fight back against criminal allegations.