Store owner jailed for meth items
A Smithville store owner will serve five years in federal prison for conspiring to distribute pseudoephedrine to meth traffickers.
The defendant, Elmus Johnson of Smithville, owner/operator of Smithville Food Mart, also known as the Texaco Food Mart, sold the cold medicine after being specifically warned by drug enforcement agents not to sell pseudoephedrine in mass quantities because it was being used to manufacture meth. Some of Johnson’s main customers are believed to be from Warren County.
Drug enforcement agents say Johnson purchased large amounts of pseudoephedrine from a Canadian company, which would ship the drugs separately to Johnson to avoid suspicion. Johnson purchased approximately three cases of the drug per month, each case containing 144 bottles of pseudoephedrine, between 2001 and 2002.
At some point, lawmen went undercover in an attempt to purchase the drug from Johnson. However, the store owner said he was out, not knowing Customs officials had seized his shipment at the border. During a recorded undercover conversation, Johnson acknowledged to undercover agents the warning he had received from drug enforcement officials regarding mass sale of the drug. Johnson also said he had “sold a ton” of the drug and that he would not record the names of the persons purchasing the drugs from him.
Johnson’s sentence comes less than a month after a pair of McMinnville businessmen, Lester Land and Gary Dodson, former owner of Bridgeside Market, were sentenced to 21 years and three years, respectively, for illegally selling mass quantities of ephedrine to meth traffickers. Lawmen warn the crack down will continue against businesses which continue selling ephedrine to meth-makers.