He loaded the minivan with 252 bottles of 'Purple Drank' syrup and headed out, Alabama cops say
At first, when the Mobile County Sheriff's deputy pulled over a minivan heading east on Interstate 10 on Tuesday, it smelled like Dannon Jamison was heading toward a marijuana charge.
But the 43-year-old Houston resident got a lot more than that after he gave consent for deputies to search the vehicle.
That's because he had packed the minivan with 252 bottles of promethazine syrup, the main and active ingredient in "Purple Drank," a sedative drink popularized by Southern rappers in the late 1990s and early 2000s. He hid the bottles in floor storage compartments and throughout the van, according to a news release from the Mobile County Sheriff's Office.
"I'm sure this wasn't going to a pharmacy or some medical clinic," Mobile County Sheriff's Capt. Paul Birch told WALA. "Taking a prescription drug, without a doctor's care, it can be deadly."
The drug, usually mixed with soda, also goes by "sizzurp," and "lean," but some also refer to it as "codeine." Hip-hop luminaries DJ Screw and Pimp C, from Jamison's hometown of Houston, were part of a rap movement based on slowing down the beats of songs, influenced by the experience of being on the drug.
Both died from codeine overdoses after years of glorifying its use in songs.
Deputies asked to search Jamison's minivan after smelling marijuana smoke when he rolled his window down.
He was charged with one count of illegal possession of a prescription drug for each bottle in the van, plus one more charge for the marijuana. It all added up to 253 drug charges.
According to jail records, Jamison remained in Mobile's Metro Jail on Thursday. His bond amount was not listed. Just the paperwork on the 253 drug charges, though, was a thing to behold, WALA reported.
Interstate 10 and Interstate 65 are important trafficking routes in the "Purple Drank" trade, according to the station. Interstate 10 runs east-west through Houston, one important hub, while Interstate 65 runs north-south through Alabama before becoming Interstate 85 before hitting Atlanta, the other major Southern codeine hub, from where the concoction is spread throughout the U.S.
Pints of promethazine, which costs between $20 and $50 with a doctor's prescription, according to Vice, can go for as much as $1,000 on the black market. That makes the street value of the syrup seized from Jamison's minivan Tuesday as high as $252,000, plus whatever the weed was worth.
This story was originally published April 19, 2018 at 2:41 PM with the headline "He loaded the minivan with 252 bottles of 'Purple Drank' syrup and headed out, Alabama cops say."