As synthetic cannabinoids such as K2 and Spice are sold in some stores in Lincoln County, police and hospital staff are scrambling to keep abreast of the problems and symptoms these drugs bring.
Boothbay Harbor Chief of Police Bob Hasch said, “We’ve had a huge number of cases here involving synthetic marijuana. We put stuff on Facebook on it. Hadn’t heard about anyone being violent on it, mostly just being sick.”
The problem is, he said, there are so many different kinds, and no chemicals are listed on the package. Regarding banning any of the products, he said the Maine Drug Enforcement agency has that role to play.
“I personally talked with the head of DEA about it,” said Hasch.
Synthetic “marijuana” is not marijuana at all, but is actually a chemical spray that is applied to any plant material. The spray is what makes people high, not the plant matter.
James Wesley, the supervisor of Drug Chemistry in New York State’s Monroe County Crime Lab, has been studying the ever-changing landscape of drug use since the 1990s.
“People high on synthetic cannabinoids can have organ failure, they can have psychosis, Hulk syndrome. Any type of restraining the person causes their muscles to break down into lactic acid, and they develop acidosis. This becomes critical and can lead to kidney failure,” he said.
John William Huffman, a professor emeritus of organic chemistry at Clemson University, first synthesised many cannabinoids in 1984 to aid in research of multiple sclerosis, AIDS, and chemotherapy.
He wanted to test the effect of cannabinoid receptors in the brain and other organs.
In the late 2000s, two of Huffman’s cannabinoid compounds began being sold in Germany as synthetic marijuana known as K2 and Spice.
The rise of the Internet has made spreading the information much easier. For instance chemical compounds for synthetic marijuana were posted on Wikipedia, and so other people have begun making these synthetic cannabinoids.
Roy McKinney, director of the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency for 15 years, said because the synthetic cannabinoid drug is man-made, the psychoactive ingredients are very high in potency.
McKinney said the DEA put an emergency ban on the 15 substance cannabinoids as well as any derivatives, so as to prevent those from just changing a minor molecule and putting it back on the market.
“This drug is getting sold in Maine,” said McKinney. “People try to skirt the law, either because the person is already on probation so they turn to “fake” drugs that are not illegal to possess or distribute.”
Wesley said in all the years he has spent researching the history of illicit drugs, “it has never happened in history before that people can make new compounds and have it marketed in months. These are very complicated structures; you basically need a Ph.D. to make these types of drugs.”
He would not identify any one country, but said the drugs are made overseas and brought in and labeled as different products, such as bonsai fertilizer.
One way to fight the K2/Spice drug said Wesley is by using Federal Trade Commission laws, which protect consumers on bogus products.
“If the truthful list of contents, and the ingredients intended-purpose of use is truthful, that’s fine.”
K2 and other spice products however, do not list the ingredients. They are labeled “not for human consumption” so as to avoid having to list the ingredients. FTC’s aim is to protect consumers against bogus snake oil products, Wesley said.
“When the herbal ecstasy drug came on the market in 1996, Global World Media Corp. and Sean Shayan, the company’s owner, made $200 million selling the pill which was a mixture of ephedra and caffeine.
“The Federal Trade Commission was the entity that stopped him. They got him on the law that he had tampered and adulterated a product that can cause harm,” Wesley said.
According to Wesley, the drug symptoms included increase body temperature and basal constriction, where sweating is blocked. The drug was a misused treatment of a diet pill and hundreds were hospitalized by it.
The FTC charged the company’s marketing of Ecstasy, which included ads in media with large youth audiences, made explicit and unqualified false claims about safety, and did not disclose the health and safety risks of using the product.
Wesley said the costs to society are in the billions.
“Unlike street drugs, which are bad, retail street drugs – the little packets in a store – are awful. We are spending billions in hospital admissions, traffic enforcement, possible organ damage, mental health issues, depressive state, and peoples’ long-term earning potential,” Wesley said.
Darcie Hutchins of Alna took the seminar taught by Wesley last year as part of her training in the Miles Hospital laboratory.
“K2 and Spice cannabinoids are not like marijuana. They are very highly addictive because of the highly toxic chemicals they put on it. They need to not [only] outlaw the chemical structure, they need [instead] to outlaw anything that acts on the brain like a cannabinoid,” Hutchins said.
In regard to the stores that still sell the Spice and K2 drugs, she said, “It’s sad to see people willing to put money before people’s safety.”