Mobile County law enforcement and public health officials gathered this week to deliver an urgent warning to residents about a particularly dangerous batch of the synthetic drug known as spice that has been circulating through the area, one they say has already been linked to serious illnesses and at least two deaths.
The announcement came just hours after Mobile County Sheriff’s deputies intercepted a major shipment of the drug, an unusual coincidence of timing that put the seizure and the health warning on the same day and gave the press conference its sense of urgency.
Sheriff Sam Cochran told reporters that deputies confiscated 489 packages of spice, worth an estimated $15,000, during a traffic stop on Interstate 10. Cochran said investigators believe Mobile County was the shipment’s intended destination, though he declined to release further details about the ongoing investigation.
Arrests were made in connection with the stop, he said, though booking of the suspects had not been completed as of Wednesday afternoon. The size of the haul — nearly five hundred retail packages moving in a single vehicle — suggested a distribution operation rather than personal use, and Interstate 10 has long been recognized as one of the primary drug corridors across the Gulf South, running from Florida through Mobile and on toward the Mississippi line.
“We just want to alert the public that it’s here, it’s here in abundance and it’s something that’s serious,” Cochran said.
Spice, a synthetic cannabinoid product often marketed as incense or potpourri and sprayed onto plant material, has circulated in the Mobile area for several years despite state restrictions on its sale.
The drug belongs to a family of laboratory-created chemicals designed to mimic the active ingredients in marijuana, but with far less predictability. Because manufacturers constantly alter the chemical formulas to stay ahead of bans, users can never know exactly what they are consuming — a variability that public health officials blame for the drug’s tendency to produce severe, unpredictable reactions even in people who have used it before without apparent harm.
Alabama moved early to address the problem, adding synthetic cannabinoids to the state’s list of controlled substances after they began appearing in convenience stores and smoke shops across the state more than a decade ago. But the bans chase formulas that keep changing, and the product keeps returning under new labels and new chemistry.
Poison control centers and hospital toxicologists across the Southeast have spent years warning that the products’ marketing — colorful packets labeled as potpourri, incense or herbal blends — is designed to skirt both drug laws and product liability, while the contents can be far stronger than the plant-based drug they imitate.
But officials say the chemical makeup of the drug’s most recent batches appears to be more potent and unpredictable than versions previously seen on the street, prompting the joint warning.
Two deaths and a spike in calls
Mobile Police Chief James Barber said his department believes spice was responsible for the deaths of two adult men in recent weeks. Family members of both men told investigators the victims had used spice before they died, and medical examiners found no underlying health conditions that would otherwise explain the deaths, Barber said.
“At this point we felt it was prudent to warn people that we are dealing with a batch of spice that we haven’t seen before,” Barber said.
The detail about the medical examinations matters in a way public health officials understand well: synthetic cannabinoid deaths are difficult to attribute because the chemicals break down quickly and toxicology screening does not routinely detect them. Testimony from family members about what the victims used, combined with the absence of any other explanation, is often what establishes the connection.
Officials urged anyone who has used spice and experiences chest pain, severe anxiety, confusion or collapse to seek emergency care immediately and to tell treating physicians exactly what was taken, since accurate information about exposure changes how a case is treated.
Mobile Police Department spokeswoman Ashley Rains said in a statement that the recent illnesses and deaths tied to spice appear to be the result of a particularly harmful batch reaching the community. Rains said the drug is believed to be causing cardiac problems as well as hallucinations in people who use it, and that investigators are reaching out to hospital emergency rooms and area doctors to track additional cases.
That outreach to hospitals is the surveillance side of the response. Because there is no mandatory reporting system for synthetic drug reactions, police and health officials have to build the picture themselves — asking emergency departments to flag cases that fit the pattern so the scale of the outbreak can be understood while it is still happening.
Interim Mobile Fire-Rescue Chief Randy Smith said his department has seen a sharp rise in emergency calls tied to bad reactions to the drug. Crews responded to only two spice-related calls in the entire month of March, Smith said, but had already responded to 25 such calls in the 17 days leading up to the press conference — a dramatic spike that mirrors what hospitals and police are reporting.
For first responders, the spike carries its own risks. Patients reacting to synthetic cannabinoids can be violently agitated, requiring multiple medics and police officers to restrain them safely, and the cardiac symptoms the drug produces can become emergencies of their own during transport.
The March comparison in Smith’s numbers made the trend legible: two calls in a full month, then twenty-five in seventeen days — a rise too steep to be explained by chance reporting, and consistent with a new, more potent supply reaching users at the same time.
Officials said the increase underscores how quickly a single tainted batch of the drug can spread through a community and overwhelm first responders. Unlike alcohol or marijuana, whose effects scale with dose in familiar ways, a single dose of a potent synthetic batch can put a user in cardiac distress or complete psychosis.
Under the counter
Cochran said that while the retail sale of spice from store counters is no longer legal in Alabama, some retailers continue to sell it discreetly to customers who ask for it by name or by coded terms, cutting into the profits some once made openly.
“You can’t sell it in store fronts anymore, but because it was such a money maker for some stores, owners sell it under the counter,” Cochran said.
He added that in some cases, employees sell the drug without the knowledge of store owners, complicating efforts to hold specific businesses accountable. “We’ve been cracking down on them,” he said, noting that his department continues to pursue leads on retailers believed to still be selling the substance illegally.
That distinction — owners versus employees — is a real enforcement problem. Before the state ban, spice sat in display racks and generated enough profit that some retailers built their margins around it; after the ban, the inventory moved into the back room, and proving who authorized a sale becomes an evidentiary question rather than a simple observation.
Undercover buys, packaging checks and tips from former customers have historically been how such cases are made, and officials said the same playbook was already underway against the retailers still moving the product quietly.
Law enforcement officials used the press conference to appeal directly to parents and caregivers, asking them to stay alert for signs of spice use among young people and to report any information that could help investigators identify local shops still selling the drug.
Officials said tips from the public have historically been critical in building cases against sellers who operate quietly to avoid detection. Anyone with information about where spice is being sold in the Mobile area is asked to contact the Mobile Police Department.
The appeal to families reflects what the case history of synthetic drugs has taught investigators nationwide: these products spread through social circles and casual word of mouth, sold in small quantities to young buyers, and the first people to notice something wrong are usually the people at home.
Young users are frequently introduced to the drug by friends who underestimate it, precisely because the packaging resembles potpourri and the street lore treats it as a legal high. Officials hoped that naming the two deaths publicly would puncture that assumption.
Officials said the cooperative effort between the sheriff’s office, city police and fire-rescue personnel reflects how seriously local agencies are treating the current wave of spice-related illnesses, and said the warning is intended to reach families before more residents are harmed.
The joint appearance was itself a message. Agencies whose jurisdictions normally stop at city limits or at the courthouse door stood together on the same day a major shipment was seized, sending the signal that the response to a dangerous batch crossing into Mobile County would be coordinated rather than fragmented.
The cooperation also extends the response’s reach: sheriff’s deputies patrol the county’s highways and unincorporated areas, city police handle the retail districts where under-the-counter sales persist, and fire-rescue medics see the overdose consequences before either agency does. Each of the three holds a different piece of the same problem.
For residents, the practical advice from the officials was simple: the batch now circulating is stronger and more dangerous than what users may remember from previous years, no store may legally sell it, and anyone who sees the drug in circulation — or knows where it is being sold — should say so, before the next emergency call comes from someone they know.