CBS2 Exclusive: Bronx Father Confronts Bodega Over Son's K2 Crisis
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- A Bronx man afraid of losing his son to K2 has taken a very bold step.
As CBS2's Lou Young reported Wednesday, Lewis Cruz went to the store where workers have been selling his son the drug. Young talked with Cruz and the store clerks.
"It's a painful, painful sight," Cruz said.
Cruz said his adult son, whom CBS2 is not identifying, becomes unhinged under the influence of the drug known as K2.
"He babbles. He hallucinates. He thinks that things are in the air around him and he's swinging around," Cruz said. "It came to a point is, I'm not going to lose my son to something that's sold out in the streets. I needed to reach out."
So Cruz went to the source – the Silver Deli-Grocery a bodega in the Morris Park section of the Bronx. The stuff sold for $4 and $5 per bag, and he begged with tears in his eyes for them to stop selling to his son.
It made an impression.
"He said his son is getting sick because of that, and we should stop," said bodega worker Ali Hussein. "I'm like, 'Listen, I'm going to stop selling it to your son.'"
And Hussein did eventually discontinue selling K2. But other bodegas in the neighborhood have still carried it.
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State Sen. Jeffrey Klein (D-The Bronx/Westchester), who represents the area, said the problem is an example of why so-called synthetic marijuana needs to be fully illegal – to buy, sell, or possess.
"I've passed my legislation in the senate for the past four years. Unfortunately, the assembly just won't act," Klein said.
Klein was especially upset with stores near the Bronx Psychiatric Center selling the stuff to patients. Many have pointed out that the mentally ill and the homeless are succumbing to the stuff in frightening numbers.
One patient at the Bronx Psychiatric Center recently smoked K2 and was found in Rockland County, apparently having walked through the Bronx, across the George Washington Bridge, and up the Palisades Parkway.
Cruz said he is getting his son to a treatment facility, and is hopeful that the state will make K2 illegal soon.
"They should have done this a long time ago," Cruz said.
The New York state K2 legislation package gets another Albany airing in January.
