College student suspected of supplying mail order drugs

SANTA BARBARA — Suspected of plying his business studies toward an illicit drug trade, a city college student was arrested Tuesday on multiple trafficking charges.

Throughout the month of June, detectives with the sheriff’s Narcotics Unit sifted through various reports of ongoing cocaine, marijuana and LSD sales emanating from the pristine beachfront city college campus. The month-long investigation found its prime suspect in Noah Davenport, a 20-year-old business administration student who had recently been issued a physician’s prescription for medicinal marijuana.

As sheriff’s spokesman Drew Sugars revealed on the day of Davenport’s arrest, it didn’t take Narcotics Unit detectives long to connect the dots.

“Local medical marijuana dispensaries were his supply chain,” Sugars said, indicating that Davenport had for some time been acting “under the guise of purchasing the marijuana for a personal medical condition.”

Evidence acquired in Tuesday’s warrant search of Davenport’s apartment in midtown Santa Barbara indicated that Davenport was allegedly packaging the marijuana in ziplock baggies and then mailing them out of state via the U.S. Postal Service to various Midwest buyers. Davenport’s apartment was also found to contain cocaine, numerous Xanax pills, LSD tabs and packaging materials indicative of an active mail-order business. Taken into custody at the apartment were Davenport and a male minor whom “Davenport was found to have provided with a bindle of cocaine,” according to Sugars.

Davenport was booked into county jail on charges of possession of cocaine for sales, possession of marijuana for sales, transportation of marijuana, possession of LSD for sales, and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. His bail has been set at $30,000, while the male minor has been charged with possession of a controlled substance and was released into the custody of his parents.

Noah Davenport