'Synthetic pot' it's not. Bans bring unintended consequences

Don't be fooled.

The designer drugs commonly known as K2 or Spice, are

Sold in gas stations and convenience stores under the thin guise of "mood enhancing incense," the chemically-treated herbs are used by unwary consumers who roll it up and smoke it. Urine and blood tests commonly used by employers and hospitals usually can't detect it; which has long been the attraction for Spice huffers.

On Monday, the New Jersey Legislature

On the way to making them illegal, politicians and some news organizations have dangerously misinformed the public by labeling the drugs as "synthetic marijuana" and "fake pot."

Again: The truth is there is

The unfortunate reality is that the laws have little or no impact on general use of these insidious chemicals. Most of the Spice brands contain thousands of chemicals -

Though well-intentioned, the politics behind the bans point to something disturbing.

Back in 2010 a large batch of a chemical synthetic drug used by medical laboratories was seized at the UPS shipping facility in the Philadelphia International Airport. The substance, called JWH-018, was invented by a scientist as a tool to experiment on cannabinoid receptors in animals. The confusion between chemical sprays and natural weed started that day when law enforcement and the press labeled it "synthetic marijuana."

The accepted term "marijuana" refers to a plant whose scientific name is

Modern research has uncovered more than 80 different natural cannabinoids in the cannabis plant. Most interesting is that our bodies already produce cannabinoids for these receptors.

Dr. Jahan Marcu is one of the few scientists researching cannabinoids in the United States and has been in the Philadelphia area while completing his doctoral work. Marcu, with whom I have written extensively about the Spice phenomena since 2010, said JWH-018 was once cheap and easy to obtain for laboratory research. Marcu and other scientists used it on mice. But after the state legislatures added JWH-018 and its analogues to the list of Schedule 1 drugs (substances with no legitimate medical use) research has become nearly impossible.

We sat down this week to discuss thew wider scientific implications of the new laws.

PHILLY420:

MARCU:

PHILLY420:

MARCU:

PHILLY420:

MARCU:

Many other compounds identified are unknown, or go undetected. And who knows what these turn into once they are set on fire/smoked or metabolized.

These drugs have a few effects that mimic cannabis but many have more effects that have never, or have seldom been, reported with cannabis.

These new drugs interact with receptors in a different way and are metabolized in different ways. What happens to these synthetic drugs after consumption? They do not just magically leave your body, they are turned into different drugs by the liver and other processes. These have actions of their own, and this may account for many negative effects reported.

The acute negative symptoms are easily treatable with Benadryl, according to the case reports that looked at hospital visits from overdoses of Spice. Case reports suggest putting the person suffering from Spice overdose in a room that is not very stimulating and talking to them, and administering Benadryl to calm the person.

Goldstein smoked his first joint in 1994 and has been working to legalize marijuana ever since. He serves on the Board of Directors at PhillyNORML has been covering cannabis news for over a decade. Reach him at