Sokolov Newsstand Owner Stuck With Dangerous "Legal" Drug: No One Will Take It Back

The owner of a newsstand in Sokolov, 65-year-old Jiří, found himself in an absurd predicament: after discovering that the cannabis-branded "Mount Everest" pouches he'd been selling actually contained a banned psychoactive substance, he tried to legally dispose of his remaining stock — only to be turned away by the police, the public health authority, and every waste collection point he approached.

Earlier, a district court in Karlovy Vary heard the Czech Republic's first-ever case involving the sale of synthetic marijuana containing MDMB-PINACA, a substance now on the list of banned psychoactive compounds. A shop assistant in Nejdek, in the Karlovy Vary Region, was provisionally fined nearly 30,000 crowns for spreading drug abuse — she had been selling the very same Mount Everest pouches, made by the Brno-based company Bonghemia.

Cheap to buy, good markup

Jiří had been selling the same product at his kiosk from last October until roughly March. "People kept asking about that kind of thing, so I decided to try it out. It seemed like an interesting item with a decent margin," he says. He bought joints and pouches for 67 crowns each, then sold the joints for 120 crowns and the pouches for 140. By his own estimate, since the start of the year he'd sold around two hundred pouches and roughly a thousand ready-made joints. A company representative had assured him everything was perfectly legal.

MDMB-PINACA is a synthetic cannabinoid developed in a laboratory that acts on the same brain receptors as THC, but is 10 to 100 times stronger than the natural substance. According to the National Anti-Drug Headquarters, it has been on the list of banned substances since November 2025, and between January and May 2026, 161 cases of intoxication from synthetic substances were recorded, 119 of them among children and teenagers. Officially, the new phenomenon has already been linked to at least four deaths.

The company refused to take the product back

The turning point came in mid-August, when Jiří read a news story about the convicted shop assistant and recognized the same Mount Everest pouches in the accompanying photo — he still had 73 of them sitting in his storeroom. As a regular business customer, he checked Bonghemia's website and found that, despite the court ruling, the product was still available to order freely. He called the company's sales representative and warned him about the dangerous substance. "The company is already dealing with it," came the reply in a voice message, which added that the product shown on the website had last actually been sold in December, and that the current formula supposedly complied with the law. The only way to verify this would be through a toxicology lab, since the packaging lists no ingredients — the product is simply labeled a "collector's item," "not intended for consumption." The company refused to take back his 73 pouches. Its owner did not respond to questions.

Five rejections in a row

Feeling obliged to report the danger, Jiří went to the police in late August. Investigators have so far declined to comment on the case, citing confidentiality of the materials. But filing a report was only the beginning — his real ordeal was trying to get rid of the product.

The police sent him to the regional public health station, which sent him on to a waste collection point in Lomnice, where he was told he could simply toss the pouches in a container, but that no official certificate would be issued. And a certificate was exactly what he needed, so that no one could later accuse him of handing over or selling a dangerous product. The next day, at the collection point in Sokolov, an employee told him he must be out of his mind for bringing in such "garbage," while her supervisor refused to accept the product outright, citing the lack of a proper waste catalogue code.

After his fifth rejection, Jiří turned to the environmental department of the Karlovy Vary Regional Authority. There he was told that to dispose of a product containing banned substances, he needed to contact licensed hazardous waste companies and specialized incineration facilities for hazardous waste, and was given a list of four suitable firms. Now the newsstand owner faces yet another round of negotiations. "The devil owed me one, apparently. I don't even know for sure whether these pouches really contain banned substances. But since the authorities say I'm the one legally responsible for what's inside them, I'd rather destroy the stuff than risk getting punished," he sums up, recalling the old saying about the absurdity of dealing with the state.

Source: seznamzpravy.cz