Spice Diamond is a commonly sold form of “herbal incense.” whose psychoactive ingredient is a synthetic cannabinoid
Image: Wikimedia Commons
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A worldwide arms race has erupted between inventive street chemists who concoct "legal" highs and government officials who wish to regulate and interdict the proliferation of synthetic cannabis products that can send their users to an emergency room or the morgue.
"Legal" pot with names like Spice, K2, Genie Silver and Yucatan Fire now flies off the shelves as "incense" in head shops, convenience stores and, of course, on the Web. The herbal mixtures are infused with synthetic chemicals that hit the same cellular switches in the brain as tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive component of marijuana.
Although these concoctions are often labeled as being unfit for human consumption, users in the know smoke them for a strong high that can sometimes also produce psychosislike symptoms, rapid heartbeat, seizures, even death. The federal government and many states have enacted laws against the use of some of these drugs, but the problem is growing: During the first eight months of this year, the American Association of Poison Control Centers received calls for 4,421 synthetic pot incidents, a 52 percent increase from the total for all of 2010. And last month, three players from the Louisiana State University Tigers college football team were suspended when they tested positive for the compounds after a random drug screening.
In Arkansas, which passed an emergency order in July 2010 to ban synthetic cannabinoids, officials view the problem as severe enough that they have now deployed a network of federally funded laboratories within their state (in collaboration with state and private laboratories) to keep tabs on the protean ingenuity of street chemists, who reformulate these drugs faster than governments can pass regulations to control them. Each time one is banned, chemists retire to the lab to come up with a new synthetic chemical that, at least for a time, is not illegal and will likely elude drug tests.
In the November issue of Nature Medicine, Jeffrey H. Moran, branch chief for the Public Health Laboratory at the Arkansas Department of Health, authored an opinion article recommending that his state's approach of tapping the analytical chemistry and toxicological capabilities of these labs should serve as an example that might be imitated nationwide. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.)
Moran suggests that the Laboratory Response Network, set up by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after 9/11 to combat chemical and biological terrorist threats, be deployed by other state governments for tracking and developing tests for the nearly 150 synthetic pot products in circulation. In Arkansas state agencies have tapped the resources of these labs to identify the latest versions of synthetic pot products and develop tests to detect them. "Ultimately, the collaborative efforts in Arkansas established both the scientific rationale and political support for legislative action," Moran noted in his article.
In March the Arkansas state legislature passed a law that allowed the state's top public health official to decide, after proper testing but without legislative approval, if new forms of synthetic cannabis should be banned for recreational use. In Moran's view, the labs can also serve another purpose. The pursuit of Spice and kindred intoxicants—and the need for a rapid response in developing new tests to detect them—can serve as a practice run for more dire scenarios. "This gives me a teaching tool for the staff here for terrorist events," Moran said in an interview. "Obviously there are not a lot of real instances of those in the workplace."
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12 Comments
Add CommentMore people use drugs today because of the effects of vaccines and poison in the food
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisReally? Can you name any independant studies to back up this claim? I thought that vaccines caused autism and mental retardation, not drug abuse. I really don't believe that but that is the current conspiracy theory of the day.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Moran suggests that the Laboratory Response Network, set up by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after 9/11 to combat chemical and biological terrorist threats, be deployed by other state governments for tracking and developing tests for the nearly 150 synthetic pot products in circulation."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisReally?! Putting money meant to counter anthrax, small pox and other various bio-wepon terrorist threats twards preventing drug addicts from giving them selves seizures? I guess that's what happens when political support for legislative action establishes scientific rationale and priority. Great use of tax payer money.
And none of this would be a problem if marijuana was legal. Good thing the government is keeping us safe from that awful plant.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow you you be so ignorant dkommel? Early use and regular use of marijuana has been linked to schizophrenia and bipolar.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo typical of the dangers of unintended consequences. No person who supported the funding of these anti-terrorism laboratories for use against Islamic terrorist "foreigners" would countenance their use against Americans no matter what phony reason is used to justify it. We need vote out of office any legislator who supports the use of "terrorism" funds against Americans. What's next, using terrorism funds to track down "men" who miss alimony payments? In this country the battle between them and us has turned into a battle of citizens against their own government.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this-We need to vote out of office- sorry for the oops
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust another perversion of taxpayer money. Funny how the avowed purpose of public funding ends up stolen for something totally unrelated. Makes you wonder what else these fascists sleazebags are doing behind our backs with our money. Sort of like the industrial espionage and character assination carried on by the FBI under the guise of the Patriot Act.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisplease post a link to a legit website that supports your stance...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"the Arkansas state legislature passed a law that allowed the state's top public health official to decide, after proper testing but without legislative approval, if new forms of synthetic cannabis should be banned for recreational use."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisArkansas, leading the charge into a new Dark Age of Corporate domination of feudal consumer/serfs.
Why bother with that pesky legislature, which might ask ugly questions about who wrote/sponsored this bill? Better to just do away with the Lege completely, and let our Corporate Lords decide what is best for us. (shudder).
Oh my. I can't imagine who is benefiting from all this, except for the people who otherwise wouldn't have a job.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think we allow government to interfere with
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thispeople's lives unjustly by the whole "war on drugs".
The idea of prohibiting intoxicants was bankrupt when Csar Alexander decreed the People could not have
alcohol. Of course that wasn't meant to apply to aristocrats. To tell Russians they can't have vodka!
It can't have worked, but surely it was one of the reasons he ended up being shot, with his family.
After that, the USA tried banning alcohol. What a spectacular failure, but crooked, vested interests proceeded to ban cannabis and other drugs so the
law enforcement industry would never run out of
work. It's well established the CIA imports cocaine &
heroin into the USA. It should be well established
prohibiting intoxicants causes abuse to multiply.
We should stop the government by all means from keeping
the hypocritical "war on drugs" going, especially from
increasing their powers over what we chose to take.
It's a boot in the face of the People.
I want to stop smaller crooks from making and selling
stuff that people damgage and destroy themselves with,
but beleive the prerequisite to reduce the drug abuse
epidemic is to legalize all drugs.
The USA's founders would never have presumed such
interferences in the People's lives.
Fortunately, there is growing, intelligent awareness
we need to end it!
I think, besides the missing factor in synthetic
marihuana, there are probably toxic impurities.