USA - A legal pot gets the attention of police

[terrapinzflyer]

A legal pot gets the attention of police

It burns like marijuana, works like marijuana and it sort of looks like it, too.

And it’s perfectly legal.

It’s called K2, and area police confirm that the little bags of dried herbs are starting to pop up among teens and young adults.

Although it may be new on the local drug scene, K2 and similar brands have the attention of a Kansas lawmaker who said she would consider outlawing the substance. That’s because the health risks of smoking one of these dubious doobies is unknown. Some European countries already have moved to ban it.

“It is new on the scene here,” said Johnson County Sheriff’s Deputy Tom Erickson. “It’s just been a few weeks since we found out it was being sold locally.”

Available for sale online and at a store in Lawrence, K2 comes in a small pouch. Inside is a mix of dried herbs that look like oregano but are laced with chemicals designed to mimic the effects of marijuana. Other brands go by the names Spice, Genie and Zohai.

Because the active ingredients are just a few atoms away from the real thing, the synthetic stuff isn’t covered by laws banning marijuana. This means K2 and similar products are legal — even though the effects are identical to pot.

Johnson County police first discovered the drug was being used by ex-convicts on probation. They turned to K2 hoping it wouldn’t show up on drug tests as marijuana. Now police are finding it in high schools.

The Sacred Journey, a botanical store in Lawrence, sells bags of K2 for $15 to $30. A store manager declined to comment, but an employee said K2 should be burnt as incense and isn’t meant to be smoked. A competing brand is marketed online as “plant food.”

The Johnson County Crime Lab ran an analysis on K2. Although it tested negative for THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, it was positive for synthetic cannabinoids. These are chemical compounds created in a lab that act on the brain like THC.

K2 contains two synthetic cannabinoids created at Clemson University. Chemistry professor John W. Huffman said an undergraduate student working in his lab actually created one of the compounds, called JWH-018 after Huffman’s initials.

Huffman said his research was designed to help find new pharmaceutical drugs and a deeper understanding of brain chemistry. He had no intention of inventing a new way to get high.

“But I’m not the least bit surprised,” Huffman said. “If you make something illegal, like marijuana, people will look for an alternative.”

Yet the fake marijuana may be more dangerous than the real McCoy, according to Huffman. He noted that unlike with marijuana, the risks of smoking synthetic cannabis haven’t been studied. His research suggests the compounds likely break down in the body into carcinogens.

The manufacturer behind K2 and similar brands remains a mystery. No information is available about the company or individuals making the products. Huffman said he thought much of the new synthetic cannabis comes from labs in Asia.

He suspects the manufacturer turns the synthetic cannabinoid into powdered or liquid form and mixes it with otherwise harmless herbs.

Britain, Germany, Poland, France, South Korea and Russia have moved to ban the sale of synthetic cannabis within the past year. Kansas may not be far behind.

State Rep. Peggy Mast, an Emporia Republican, hadn’t heard about K2 until informed by The Kansas City Star. But she’s worried enough to suggest the state should take action.

“I would be very happy to sponsor a bill to make this illegal,” Mast said.

Mast sponsored legislation a few years ago that outlawed the hallucinogenic plants jimson weed and salvia divinorum.

Johnson County Sheriff’s Deputy Chris Farkes worries that teens may assume synthetic cannabis is safe because it’s legal.

“I’ve even talked with parents who say, ‘Oh, it’s completely legal so I don’t have a problem with my kid smoking it,’ ” Farkes said.

But Huffman isn’t so sure outlawing his creation will help much.

“You ban one and they’ll come up with another one,” he said.


By DAVID KLEPPER
The Star’s Topeka correspondent


http://www.kansascity.com/105/story/1548001.html

[chillinwill]

Drug remains legal despite concerns

People from around the Kansas City area are coming to Lawrence to buy a legal drug called K2 that gets them as high as marijuana, according to area police.

Tom Erickson, a deputy sheriff for the Johnson County Sheriff’s office, said the office was one of the first to become aware of the drug. They said they first heard about it through criminals released on parole or probation who were using the smokable herb to circumvent the random drug testing process. Erickson said police studied the herb’s chemical makeup, which looks and burns like marijuana, and interviewed a number of people who have used the drug.

“They say it’s the same type of high as standard street grade marijuana,” Erickson said.

Erickson said each person the police spoke to said they thought K2 was at least as potent, if not more so, than marijuana — no one the police spoke to said K2 was any less potent.

K2 is being sold at a downtown Lawrence shop, Sacred Journey, 1103 Massachusetts St. The product sells for about $10 per gram, although prices vary depending on the potency of the herb.

Erickson said the police purchased K2 in Lawrence and brought it back to Johnson County to test the chemical breakup of the product. He said the tests suggested that K2 contained a synthetic version of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana.

“It’s definitely not a form of marijuana,” Erickson said, “but it mimics the effects on the body,”

A senior named John, who asked that his last name be withheld, said he was a regular marijuana smoker who decided to try K2 recently after hearing about it in the news.

John said he thought K2 produced a bodily effect similar to marijuana but only tasted “OK.” He said there were a number of other reasons why he wouldn’t make K2 his drug of choice.

“It’s a relaxing feeling, but it doesn’t have the head high of weed,” John said. “It’s nothing straight to the dome like weed.”

John said he thought those who did not smoke marijuana regularly would find K2 to be more potent than he did. However, because of the price and availability of marijuana in the area, John said he would stick with the illegal product.

“Great weed in this town is so readily available that I’d much rather just go to a dealer than some store,” John said.

The synthetic form of THC found in K2 was discovered during research at Clemson University in South Carolina. John Huffman, Clemson research professor of chemistry, said one of his students discovered the chemical while studying the effects of pharmaceuticals on the brain. The student named the compound after Huffman’s initials, JWH-018.

Huffman said though he did not personally study the bodily effects of K2, a group of collaborators at Virginia Commonwealth University studied the effects the drug had on mice and noted its similarities to marijuana.

“It indicated that the compound was significantly more potent than THC,” Huffman said.

Huffman said he would not recommend anyone consume K2 or drugs similar to it.

“The problem with JWH-018 is that absolutely nothing is known regarding its toxicity or metabolites,” Huffman said. “Therefore, it is potentially dangerous and should not be used.”

At this point, police said they agreed with Huffman.

“At least with marijuana we know the short- and long-term health effects,” Erickson said. “It’s a terrible idea to ingest something that you don’t understand.”

A senior named Spencer, who asked that his last name be withheld, said he occasionally smoked marijuana and tried K2 after friends recommended it to him.

Spencer said he enjoyed smoking K2, but didn’t expect he would become a regular user of the legal herb.

“I wouldn’t describe it as much as a high as a relaxed state,” Spencer said. “I think I’ll stick with the good ol’ fashioned marijuana when I want to get high,”

Spencer said he didn’t think the legality of marijuana factored into his decision much because he smoked marijuana safely and didn’t expect to have any problems with the law in the future. Police said though K2 would show up on a drug test, it was still a legal substance so its presence wouldn’t be punishable. However, Spencer said he wouldn’t even smoke K2 if he was facing such a test.

“I’d rather just keep smoking weed and take a masking agent,” Spencer said. “It’s easy to pass a drug test.”

By Brandon Sayers
November 11, 2009
Kansan
http://www.kansan.com/news/2009/nov/...concerns/?news

[frankblank]

when i first found out about the jwh compounds, I couldn't belive a google news search turned up nothing. now there are two articles from kansas and one from the UK. still not exactly the media attention you would expect from a new, legal, drug.

[RoboCodeine7610]

I think they're really exagerating when they say that the effects are "identical to pot".It may be similar, but the only thing that's identical to pot is pot...

Still, I think the reason why they're not in a hurry to outlaw it is simply because it cannot produce paper,plastics,clothes etc... like hemp can.So why would the corporations push the government to make it illegal? It's not like they care about your health.

[rawbeer]

I think it's kind of funny that Peggy Mast and co. bothered to outlaw jimson weed - which probably kills less people a year than lightning bolts - and I wonder if this law covered the tons of solanaceous plants with nearly identical properties, that aren't mentioned in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Anyway, it appears that K2 is no longer for sale, at least from online vendors. It's kind of a testament to the failure of the war on drugs that a legal and apparently fairly effective substitute for pot just can't find a real market, said market being so hyper-saturated with pot.
And sadly ironic that synthetic drugs that are more dangerous than pot are nonetheless legal...well, at least we won't have to worry about another jimson weed epidemic.