Synthetic ‘Spice’ Kingpins Get Two-Decade Sentences in Las Vegas

Two film producers who the government said were two of the nation’s most prolific synthetic drug traffickers received two-decade prison sentences in Las Vegas, following their convictions last year for running a “continuing criminal enterprise,” under a statute colloquially known as the kingpin law.

The sentences imposed Wednesday mark the latest chapter in the legal saga of Charles Burton Ritchie and Benjamin Galecki, who in the early 2010s distributed synthetic cannabinoids—more commonly known as spice, K2, or synthetic marijuana—nationwide. Like natural cannabis, the substance binds on the body’s cannabinoid receptors, but more efficiently, producing a more extreme high.

Ritchie, ...