Rep. Edwin K. Propst (Ind-Saipan) is set to introduce a bill that seeks to establish a more severe penalty for businesses that engage in drug-related activities.<\/p>\n
The freshman lawmaker wants businesses caught dabbling in illegal drugs to be fined a minimum of $250,000 and have their business license revoked for a year. He said this penalty is separate from any criminal fees, fines, and penalties under the current law.<\/p>\n
The fines collected from erring companies, Propst suggests, would be divvied up as follows: 25 percent to the Department of Public Safety for drug enforcement purposes; 25 percent to the Division of Customs for drug enforcement purposes; 25 percent to the CNMI drug court; and 25 percent to the general fund.<\/p>\n
Propst\u2019s introduction of what he terms the \u201cCommercial Business-Drug Control Act of 2016\u201d comes as the Division of Customs, for a second time, found a cache of methamphetamine or \u201cice\u201d in a cargo container brought in by Sunleader, a cargo consolidating company on Saipan.<\/p>\n
Propst, in the bill he is set to introduce, said, \u201cThe Legislature finds that certain business establishments, both small and large, have engaged and\/or are engaging in illicit drug trade. This illegal activity continues to negatively affect our residents and our great Commonwealth as a whole.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added that businesses that have been caught engaging in such activities continue to conduct business operations with the CNMI.<\/p>\n
To remedy this, Propst wants appropriate measures taken to penalize business establishments that also engage in the illegal drug business.<\/p>\n
Last Dec. 2, Customs found 4.9 lbs of \u201cice\u201d with a street value of around $850,000 inside a 5-gallon paint container inside a cargo container belonging to Sunleader during a routine inspection at the Port of Saipan.<\/p>\n
Nearly five months earlier, a Customs inspector detected \u201cice\u201d in an air compressor in a container from Guangzhou, China, at the seaport warehouse. The illegal drugs found weighed 23 lbs and worth between $3.2 million and $4.3 million. The container where the compressor was found also belonged to Sunleader.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rep. Edwin K. Propst (Ind-Saipan) is set to introduce a bill that seeks to establish…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[56,26,410,2074],"class_list":["post-217280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-business-3","tag-cnmi","tag-drugs","tag-last-dec"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217280\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}