DULUTH, Minn. - On many mornings, it looks like it's the hottest business in downtown.
Dozens of customers line up in front of the Last Place on Earth head shop on Superior Street to buy designer drugs, including herbal incense - sold as a legal alternative to marijuana - with names such as No Name, Armageddon and DOA, and bath salts called Insurrection and Lunar Eclipse.
Some of the fidgety customers look like they're waiting to get into a soup kitchen. Others look like your next-door neighbor.
The products they are seeking to buy are composed of a class of chemicals perceived as legally mimicking cocaine, LSD and methamphetamine. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is attempting to ban or control the synthetic stimulants because some users have reported impaired perception, reduced motor control, disorientation, extreme paranoia and violent episodes.
Last Place on Earth owner Jim Carlson expects to do $6 million in business this year on the sale of incense, bath salts and legal stimulants. He makes no excuses for what he sells.
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He said he once weighed 380 pounds because of a sugar and doughnut habit. That hankering was his choice, he says. He believes a person has a right to choose what they want to indulge in for enjoyment.
On Thursday, 45 people waited for Carlson to open his store. The businessman said sometimes 75 customers are waiting when he swings open the front door.
What Carlson sees as a gold mine, others see as a public health and safety minefield. Police and medical personnel are seeing an increase in designer drug-related health and crime problems, and Superior Street business owners fear that their customers will be intimidated by the designer drug clientele and the associated loitering and littering. A Duluth mother says herbal incense almost cost her son his life.
Carlson, whose business will celebrate its 30th anniversary in downtown Duluth in March, has tried some of his own medicine. He said he didn't like designer drugs and doesn't use them.
"It's not for me, but the bottom line is everybody likes different stuff," he said. He has a drink of alcohol once or twice a week.
"I've got a brother that died at 40 years old from alcohol," Carlson said. "I think it's the worst drug on the planet. A guy gets in his car after drinking, plows into a mother and her two kids and kills them."
Lynn Kubiak thinks herbal incense is just as dangerous as alcohol or any other drug to her 21-year-old son, Andrew, of Hermantown. Andrew crashed and totaled his Jeep on Labor Day weekend, and his mother blames the accident on his use of synthetic marijuana.
"Police had his receipt from the Last Place on Earth," she said. "The accident happened at 5:15 p.m. that day. He wrecked his Jeep, and he easily could have been killed. I'm amazed that this (herbal incense) is legal."
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Dean Baltes, owner of Shel/Don Design & Imaging next door to Last Place on Earth, thinks police are doing a good job of trying to protect everyone's rights.
"Police are trying to enforce the laws and trying to be sensitive to the fact that there is ambiguity whether or not this stuff is legal or not legal because it's hard to analyze," Baltes said. "They are trying to enforce the laws to protect my rights and other businesses's rights."
Mark Stodghill is a writer for the Duluth News Tribune
