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From Staff Reports
About 25 people — many of them concerned parents — showed up midday March 9 along Asheville’s South Tunnel Road near the Up in Smoke store at Innsbrook Mall for a one-hour protest of the shop’s sale of Bizarro.
The substance, which has been on the market for about a year (replacing R-2), is legal and marketed as “incense,” but the protesters claimed it is highly addictive and damaging to the young people who buy and consume it to “get high.”
The protest was planned at the M&J Food Stores, but it was moved because “M&J got busted on Thursday (March 7) for illegal video games” and “are closed until further notice,” Dr. Carl Mumpower, protest co-organizer, noted in an email. “Good,” he added.
“The protest group will include a dozen concerned partents seeking to turn the lights on these community bad guys” who sell Bizarro, Mumpower stated.
The protestors began with a prayer circle after which Taylor Personius, 19, of Asheville, who recently was released from a rehabilitation center after getting addicted to Bizarro, told them, “Thank you, everyone, for being here.”
At that point, his fellow protesters cheered him for having the courage to tell his story of getting hookd on Bizarro, which eventually resulting in losing his job.
Dawn Ingle, the other protest co-organizer, is Personius’ mother and she told the Daily Planet that Bizarro addiction caused her son to lose “all of his goals and ambitions,” created anger management problems, resulted in low self-esteem and triggered high blood pressure that persists. “His whole day revolved around (getting high from) Bizarro,” she noted.
What’s more, Ingle said the substance is not detectable in normal drug screenings. “I’d like to have it outlawed or bring awareness to parents that it’s available.”After the prayer circle, the protesters, including Personius, then waved anti-Bizarro signs and talked to some passersby and drivers who stopped to chat or ask questions on a busy and mild Saturday.
Near the end of the protest, Mumpower asked the group to march up the hill so it would pass in front of Up in Smoke. He asked the participant to turn their signs mostly to face the store as they passed, so employees and customers could read them.
After that, the group gathered in a nearby parking lot for a prayer. In the meantime, sources said a store employee approached a city policeman monitoring the protest — reportedly — to complain about the group walking past the store.One source said the man complained of harrassment.
However, the policeman reportedly told him there was no legal violation since the group did not stop in front of the shop or block its entranceway.
Mumpower asked the group, “How do you feel about what we’ve done today?”Several of the participants said they were pleased with the results, especially their interactions with pedestrians and drivers.
“On behalf of Dawn and myself, I’d like to say think you to all of you,” Mumpower said. He also cited the presence of reporters from the Daily Planet, WLOS-TV, the Asheville Citizen-Times and the Urban News.He said that, as a result of the news media presence, “lights will be turned on for a number of people” regarding the Bizarro problem.
After the prayer, Mumpower said that day’s protest over the sale of Bizarro “may not be the last” for the movement he and Ingle had launched.He then asked, “Hey, how’d you like walking by the store?”“I loved it!” one unidentified man said.
As the protesters departed, Mumpower approached the nearby policeman to thank him for his efforts — and then dashed over to the WLOS-TV crew to thank them for filming the event.Returning to a brief interview with the Daily Planet, Mumpower explained that “this (protest) will educate — or embarrass — our City Council, county commissioners” and other local elected officials “to take some action.
”When pressed by the Planet on the question of whether Bizarro would just be replaced by some other substance in some people’s efforts to “get high,” Mumpower replied, “You fight it where you can fight you it,” no matter if other dangerous products will replace it. “You don’t give up."
Earlier, Personius told the Daily Planet that he had used Bizarro daily for six months and then spent a week in “rehab.”“It’s very addictive,” he said. “For one thing, its (just) $8 for a gram and a half.” That amount, he noted, enabled him to “get high for a day.”
His mother, Ingle, noted that the product originates in Pakstan and its U.S. center is in Atlanta.
She said one of her chief goals is to “bring awareness to parents and anyone concerned that this is in your local gas station or store. They sell it in $5 and $8 packs... My ultimate goal is to have it outlawed completely, but they’ve changed it by one molecule.”
Ingle added that her other son, Devon Ingle, 12, “has always been anti-drug” and is well aware of the dangers of Bizarro after his brother’s experiences.
Describing herself as a “desperate mother,” she said, “I had him (Taylor) involuntarily committed... Wth him being 19, I didn’t have a lot of rights,” but was able to get it done.
At first, Ingle said, Taylor was furious with her for putting him in rehab, but later changed his mind and since has thanked her every day for doing it.Among the protesters was Chad Nesbitt, a past chairman of the Buncombe County Republican Party, who said, “Bizarro is marketed to young kids... It’s crazy.”
In an email sent early on the morning of the protest, titled “Bizarro protest at noon today needs your help,” Mumpower and Ingle asserted in a jointly signed email, “You may remember the K-2 and Salvia busts in December. These versions of synthetic marijuana have been proven dangerous and are illegal. A minor formula change has brought us Bizarro — an equally dangerous substance that is on the edge of legality. It is not being enforced in the Asheville community — it is capturing the attention of our children and other vulnerable people and doing great harm.
“If a guy wearing a suit can go into a store and buy Bizarro with a credit card, it is evident these folks are operating with impunity. “We’re having a protest today at the Innsbruck Mall to challenge Up In Smoke — one of the sites that markets this product from about a half mile from city hall and the police department. Many of the people in attendance will be parents struggling to pull their children away from Bizarro or users who know the harms. “We would appreciate your help in flagging this substance to the community,” the protest organizers noted. |
