How Synthetic Weed Is Ravaging Brooklyn's Homeless Population

[Disir]

Patients smoking the stuff can exhibit mild symptoms like cramps and vomiting, but the drug is also capable of pushing people to polar extremes from catatonia to epilepsy, sometimes all in the same trip. The medic told me that, in the first case he dealt with, a guy went "from zero to sixty" and leapt up from unconsciousness to start pounding on the floor like a maniac. In fact, the unpredictability of the user's response is part of why K2, which can be obtained for as little as a dollar, is so terrifying.

How Synthetic Weed Is Ravaging Brooklyn s Homeless Population VICE United States

Really good article on some really nasty crap.

 

[DrDoomNGloom]

Patients smoking the stuff can exhibit mild symptoms like cramps and vomiting, but the drug is also capable of pushing people to polar extremes from catatonia to epilepsy, sometimes all in the same trip. The medic told me that, in the first case he dealt with, a guy went "from zero to sixty" and leapt up from unconsciousness to start pounding on the floor like a maniac. In fact, the unpredictability of the user's response is part of why K2, which can be obtained for as little as a dollar, is so terrifying.

How Synthetic Weed Is Ravaging Brooklyn s Homeless Population VICE United States

Really good article on some really nasty crap.

Well once again the intellectually impaired out spreading lies.

Spice contains compounds that stimulates the same receptor sites as marijuana, nothing more, nothing less.

Do you really think those are characteristics of marijuana??

The compounds may be as much as 500 times as potent as pot of the same mass.

It is a platform in chemistry in which engineers concoct molecules that are organic and trigger receptor sites in the brain.

Now, some unscrupulous spice makers have been known to add "bath salts" to the ingredients list to "improve" on currently available products.

The bath salts are the same as methamphetamine and constructed to act as agonist just like spice does CB1 & CB2 receptors.

Usually there is a little tweak for some slight hallucinogenic properties just for shits and giggles.

This is what the tweakers want and this is what the market produces.

Funny though, most states have now implemented data bases that contain all the latest and greatest chems that are / have been used.

All are banned and carry the same penalties as marijuana, new chems that can be identified by GCMS(Gas Chromatography / mass spectrometry) are added as soon as they are identified.

But alas, the chem makers skipped the agonist and went right to the enzyme that is produced when you agitate the CB1 & CB2 receptors.

Your body makes it, you can test for it, but how you gonna make it illegal if we all produce it??

Well better living through modern chemistry, but what the hell, you know absolutely nothing about what you have posted.

[Snip]
That’s where Huffman came in. In the late nineties, the innocuous professor became interested in anecdotal claims coming out of California that cannabis helped sufferers of AIDS, cancer, and many other terrible diseases. The consummate scientist, Dr. Huffman naturally wanted to see the results of experiments to test the claims; but realizing federal policy made that practically impossible, the expert chemist spotted a loophole: because federal law only banned the active chemicals found naturally in cannabis resin (called “exogenous cannabinoids”), he could help doctors study the effects of cannabis by inventing new cannabinoids not found in nature.

The professor went to work, and the results are impressive by any measure. Huffman’s team at Clemson have synthesized over 450 cannabinoids and supplied them to researchers worldwide; a PubMed.gov search lists over 250 laboratory studies which employed at least one cannabinoid bearing his initials “JWH.” Out of such a vast trove of research chemicals can be found some true gems, such as JWH-133, a nonpsychoactive synthetic which activates the CB2 receptor and has been shown to have anti-carcinogenic properties in test tubes and mice. But such a trove may also contain nightmare drugs – and JWH-018 appears to fit the bill.

Take an untitrated pill of pure delta-9 THC (AKA Marinol, Schedule III), and see what happens. The most likely result is a staggering, overpowering high – highly disorienting and quite possibly fraught with paranoia. That is because, unlike herbal cannabis, Marinol contains no CBD or any other cannabinoids to moderate the action of THC. Even the superheated sublimation of hash oil – so-called “dabbing” – delivers a greatly-reduced but still moderating dose of ancillary exogenous cannabinoids. Marinol provides no chemical buffer at all – nothing to cushion the intoxication.

JWH-018 is even stronger. THC is known as a “partial agonist” of both CB1 and CB2 receptors – meaning that it activates both known sides of the endocannabinoid system, but not to its fullest potential (this may be one reason why no one has ever fatally overdosed from cannabis). JWH-018 is a full agonist of both receptors, which means it switches every known part of the body’s cannabis-reactive chemistry to full blast upon contact. When taken by a user with little or no tolerance to cannabis, the effects of JWH-018 can be extreme. While the question of its toxicity is by no means settled, at least one coroner’s report has attributed the cause of death to fatal overdose of JWH-018.

Today, JWH-018 is effectively banned, listed in Schedule I next to the herbal drug which caused the fuss in the first place. The “Spice” industry has adapted. After all, there are 450 other synthetics to choose from.
The Origins of K2 Spice Synthetic Cannabis And Why It Is So Dangerous

 

[ABikerSailor]

Yanno....................I don't think they have problems with synthetic marijuana in Colorado.

And...................the known effects of this stuff make it MUCH more dangerous than naturally grown cannabis.

Yet another reason for legalization.