Emanuel Cleaver wants the FDA to deal with flakka. What is flakka?

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Hometown Congressman Emanuel Cleaver recently sent a letter to the Food and Drug Administration, urging the agency to work with credit-card companies and online retailers to cut off sales of something called “flakka.” Here, from the letter:

“In 2015 alone more than two dozen people have died from Flakka-related incidents, with that number expected to rise. Addiction is a serious concern, putting those individuals at an extreme risk of death. Flakka is said to be just as addictive as cocaine but even more dangerous. According to reports, despite its illegality, foreign companies still sell Flakka online. Unfortunately, their laboratories have become a source for drug cartels in North and Central America.”

We like to think we keep our ears to the ground regarding interesting new drugs. But we had never heard of flakka before. What exactly is this mysterious new substance, and what, if anything, does it have to do with Waka Flocka Flame?

Various news reports, many of them out of Florida, indicate that Flakka is, essentially, a new version of bath salts — a synthetic drug, manufactured in Chinese labs, that turns people who ingest it into crazed zombies who eat human faces.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse notes that use of Flakka is surging in Florida and that it causes a condition called “excited delirium” that involves “hyperstimulation, paranoia, and hallucinations that can lead to violent aggression and self-injury.”

One guy on flakka tried to break into a police headquarters in Fort Lauderdale. Another guy impaled himself on a fence. 

Authorities believe most flakka shipments are entering the country through Florida — where else? — and gradually making their way into the rest of the Southeast, and, soon, many fear, the rest of the U.S. 

Kentucky is now talking about how to stop its spread. And in Broward County, Florida, they’re convening forums to deal with the scourge of this “$5 insanity drug.”


What about KC?

“We’ve not yet experienced any cases with this drug, so unfortunately can’t speak much to it,” Sergeant Kari Thompson of the Kansas City Police Department tells The Pitch. “We’ve heard about it, but not arrested anybody who was on it nor recovered the drug in any arrests.”

We reached out to Congressman Cleaver’s office to ask what motivated him to send the FDA letter.

“He [Cleaver] wants to get ahead of this problem,” says John Jones, Cleaver’s chief of staff. “There’s concern about this spreading throughout the country. Congressman Cleaver sits on the Financial Services Committee, which is a position where he can work on blocking the online sales of this [flakka].”