secret ingredients in "legal highs"

[Benga]

Hello all

This thread was posted in the some for all forum as it focuses on one particular issue of the “legal highs” grey market area, which has a quite broad spectrum.

What swim’s refering to by the term of “legal highs” are not plants, ethnos, R.C.’s and substances which are still legal / unclassified, but actual *commercial preparations*, marketed blends and mixes sold as such, as potential substitutes for various illegal substances.
Some of these products are marketed for human consumption, others are not, thinly disguised as other products such as incense etc…

The main categories these products fall into are euphoriant-relaxants (focusing on cannabis and more rarely opiod effects mimicry) and stimulants-euphoriants ( focusing on a recreation of the effects of amphetamines, cocaine, and a very special mention to a widespread and lucrative ideal of MDMA effect imitations) but also erotic stimulants and psychedelics.
Some of these commercial mixes sometimes claim to be able to give a little of both, often claiming to render the effect of substance combinations, mimicking candyflipping, hippyflipping etc, MDMA like plus a little amphetamine like, amphetamine like + a little psychedelia, a relaxant with a little aphrodisiac twist etc etc…this plays a great role in the marketing of these products.

The market of these products is dominated by herbal / plant mix based products, but also reaches elsewhere to R.C. based preparations, and other chemicals substances such as piperazine blends, D.X.M. etc…


The issue swim would like to bring to attention is that a lot of these products, existing in a fragile grey area of legality, have deliberately chosen to keep part of their ingredients a “secret”.
Which implies that users might be given hints, and partial indication as to what they're taking but, not the full picture. From a harm reduction and ethical point of view, we have to agree that this isn’t great, as most of us would concord that we strive for responsible use and *want* to know what we might be taking, "know your substance"... Knowledge is one of the most effective harm reduction tools, and here this most crucial element is virtualy denied, taken away from us.

The consensus on this situation seems to be that these “secret ingredients” are less problematic in herbal mixes, such as in the NXT Phase range, or the Bionix range, but more disturbing when it comes to the Neorganics range of R.C. based analogues, P.E.P. or London Underground piperazine blends not to mention the odd D.X.M. combinations.
The choice of a position towards such products is also due to the nature of the company itself, implying that a Dutch company with a good responsible background in psychoactives, but trying to protect their legality by leaving a few things out will be more respectable, and appear more ethical, trustworthy, than say a New Zealand or Israeli company trying to cash in on a legal loophole in anyway they can, and not worry too much about safety of the users.
“Herbal” itself is also seen as less potentially dangerous than chemical based, though this can be disputed, as some natural products can be as equally dangerous as properly weighed out extracted chemicals.
Yet with secret ingredients, weights and proportions of chemicals, or potency / concentration of extracts,are rarely given, another problem for dosing issues….
But all of this doesn’t change the fact that legal high products containing secret ingredients, imply that the user is still ingesting something without knowing what it is, pretty much as one would when taking street-drugs, and this remains problematic, in swim's point of view, not something desirable, ethical or safe.
Also not being able to specifiy what one has taken, in case of an emergency (wether dosage related, allergy related, combination related or anything else) will be a problem in E.R....or cause complications, interaction with medication, false positives in cases of drug-testing...
something best avoided, for many reasons.

The reasons behind these "secret ingredients" are numerous : legal questions, staying on the safe side of the law, avoiding bringing attention to a relatively unknown psychoactive and eventually getting it banned, commercial questions such as not getting a product copied too easily, and cashing in on the "mystery effect" which can potentially attract some gullible consumers etc...
The fact that these types of practices exists in the food industry for instance, doesn’t make it more acceptable or less problematic. Food products are not in the same league as psychoactives, the consequences of use are not the same, nor are the motivations which are clearly commercial / copyright based in the case of food products ( with the one notable exception of Coca Cola’s secret vegetable flavoring ingredient, not much of a secret, but there is a bit of an international legality issue regarding coca leaves). And if there might be a serious health issue, such as allergies, the food regulation administrations force the company to state this.

In swim’s view, this doesn’t make it ok to transfer these practices to psychoactive substances, due to the very nature of psychoactives and of their psychophysiological action : it's of basic importance to know what the monkeys are really being fed. And if swim understands what might be the implications and causes of this situation, it is still very bothering to him.
Which is why swim brought this up, and wanted to share a few views with others on this subject. What’s swiy’s stand on this issue ?Have some of these companies have ever responded positively to information requests, or is the only way of having a clear picture is having the products lab analysed, at an individual’s initiative or even by governmental authorities should something happen involving these products ( customs, death or physical problem, confiscation etc).
Also how, on what basis, do potential users decide to choose or avoid use of a particular psychoactive product with a secret active ingredient ? Is it just a herbal vs chemical-issue ? trust in the company and its background ? User feedback ?

take care

b

Reputation Comments on this post:

	very good topic
	Excellent post!
	good work benga
	interesting post. swim has taken a risk with neorganics and been happy with the results, but for the most part I definit...
	Good Post. I think is a typo in this sentence toward the bottom: "The fact that these types of practices exists in...
	very good post man. very intruiging topic
	excellent topic - thanks for bringing it up & to the attention of the masses

[sunyata]

Swim never takes any legal highs that don't list all the ingredients as well as amounts.
1- If you don't know what's in a preparation you have no chance of checking if it is contraindicated by other medications you are using or medical conditions you might suffer from.
2-If you don't know the amounts of the different ingredients you don't know how to calculate your dose, one would have to work ones way up.

All preparations for internal use, be they food, medicine or drug, should be required by law to list all known ingredients and their amounts. How else is one supposed to make an intelligent decision on what to use?

[Benga]

in more ethical cases, stargate products for instance, the contra-indications might be stipulated on the product, and some products even go as far as giving a percentage or amount of the "mysterious" ingredient in the formulation.

the problem being that the mysterious secret ingredient is often the most active one in the formulation, the rest of the components being there as synergistic complements or harm reduction ( amino acids, vitamins, or small doses of other alkaloids such as caffeine or extracts of caffeine containing plants etc)....

b

[podge]

Ya swim is wary of most legal highs as it is......but anything which does not have the active ingredient written on it is avoided like the plague. Swim was talking to a local head shop employee who was telling him about "spice ice" , he claimed it was an excellent cannabis alternative and even better than spice gold , when swim asked what the active ingrediants were he said their supplier wouldnt tell them. This instantly put swim off.

I think for most users on this board legal highs are generally regarded as lame highs. In ireland the only legal highs worth knowing about are Mescaline containing cacti, salvia and perhaps Hawiaiin baby woodrose seeds. As we all know the active ingrediants in these are well known. Where as if swim see's mysterious "happy-E caps" with different type's named "trip-E" and "speed-E" and other stupid name's like that with no active ingrediants written on them swim just stays away. What if an adverse reaction does occur?.....what does swim say to the doctor when asked what he's taken?

"Errrrr.....emmmmmm.....not sure exactly but they were over priced, over rated, unlabeled and generally shit. Oh and swim took a whole packet of them too"

Legal highs should be labeled.....it's only fair. It's bad enough the illegal one's arent labeled.lol.

[Nature Boy]

Originally Posted by podge

Ya swim is wary of most legal highs as it is......but anything which does not have the active ingredient written on it is avoided like the plague. Swim was talking to a local head shop employee who was telling him about "spice ice" , he claimed it was an excellent cannabis alternative and even better than spice gold , when swim asked what the active ingrediants were he said their supplier wouldnt tell them. This instantly put swim off.

I think for most users on this board legal highs are generally regarded as lame highs. In ireland the only legal highs worth knowing about are Mescaline containing cacti, salvia and perhaps Hawiaiin baby woodrose seeds. As we all know the active ingrediants in these are well known. Where as if swim see's mysterious "happy-E caps" with different type's named "trip-E" and "speed-E" and other stupid name's like that with no active ingrediants written on them swim just stays away. What if an adverse reaction does occur?.....what does swim say to the doctor when asked what he's taken?

"Errrrr.....emmmmmm.....not sure exactly but they were over priced, over rated, unlabeled and generally shit. Oh and swim took a whole packet of them too"

Legal highs should be labeled.....it's only fair. It's bad enough the illegal one's arent labeled.lol.

Haha, too true.

Unfortunately though most people won't ask these questions and it's only a matter of time before someone screws up and gets them all banned. I couldn't care less if all those random headshop pills go off the shelves, I've no interest in them, but it is a shame for responsible users because some people actually do enjoy them. Naturally SWIM would be pretty pissed off if mescaline cactii, HBW seeds and salvia divinorum went or worse, a Gráinne Kenny proposed full-on headshop ban.

[Nacumen]

Originally Posted by podge

wim was talking to a local head shop employee who was telling him about "spice ice" , he claimed it was an excellent cannabis alternative and even better than spice gold , when swim asked what the active ingrediants were he said their supplier wouldnt tell them. This instantly put swim off.

I don't know if you were aware, but the last time I checked, the suppliers of Spice Gold don't list the primary active ingredients for their blend. As far as I know it's a mystery as to what *actually* makes their product work.

[Sky Walker]

Originally Posted by Nacumen

I don't know if you were aware, but the last time I checked, the suppliers of Spice Gold don't list the primary active ingredients for their blend. As far as I know it's a mystery as to what *actually* makes their product work.

Then let it be further known! Ingredients in Spice:

Baybean, Blue Lotus, Lion's Tail, Lousewort, Indian Warrior, Dwarf Scullcap, Maconha Brava, Pink Lotus, Marshmallow, Red Clover, Rose, Siberian Motherwort, Vanilla and Honey

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spice_Smoking_Blend

[~lostgurl~]

Originally Posted by benga

The issue swim would like to bring to attention with these products is that a lot of these products, existing in a fragile grey area of legality, have deliberately chosen to keep part of their ingredients a “secret”.
Which implies that users might be given hints, and partial indication as to what they're taking but, not the full picture.

Has SWIY figured out their code or been given any correct hints?

SWIM tried DOMS based on one persons trip report, maybe not a good idea, but anyway, one went well the other went blah

[zera]

Just want to point out that while some drug community members may be wary of taking a legal highs product with unspecified ingredients, that I would be willing to bet that many of these same people will eat a blotter or ecstasy pill without 100% confirmation of whats in it or use coke without being aware of the cutting agent. Its not an ideal situation either way, but if you look at it as an alternative between taking an unknown legal high or taking an unknown substance from an illicit dealer, well at least the former has an estabilished legal precense that can be sued.

As for chemical vs. natural, I wouldnt let my guard down just because something is natural. Natural is often just as dangerous as man-made, for example carcinogens occur in nature nearly as often as they occur in synthetic products.
http://www.garfield.library.upenn.ed...p589y1989.html

[Benga]

Originally Posted by ~lostgurl~

Has SWIY figured out their code or been given any correct hints?

on one occasion yes. And also for instance about what the "hallucinogenic" psychoactive was in a piperazine mix. it was confirmed that the mix did not contain any additional susbtance, or extracts such as an LSA extract but just a different dosage combination of a double piperazine mix.

On codes, there are numerous examples of "hiding" ingredients, using alternative names or even misnaming them for protection or other reasons.
the famous 2 CT 7 / Sulfurous Samadhi / Blue Mystic / PT-DM saga which involved some prominent and respectable Dutch smartshops ( can be googled), the "black pepper extract" of piperazines, geranamine, the misnaming of analogs in processed RC's in Swedden and countries under the influence of one infamous person, the playing around with colloquial / local / ethnic names in herbals - ephedra-free might mean Ma-Huang containing, or Sida Cordifolia, different plants but with the same main psychoactive, naturally occuring ephedrine. If caffeine legality was questioned, we'd surely see a lot more of mateine, theine, guaranine, methyltheobromine etc... popping up.

[Micklemouse]

The difference is that with 'street' drugs there is at least an implied inference of caveat emptor - Buyer Beware. No one is selling them as something that is safe or a 'harm-reduction' gimmick, which is what is/has been implied by shop bought legal highs. It strikes me as just as cynical as a dealer making random cuts - most people will assume, rightly or wrongly, that if something is sold in a shop it will be kosher & not do them that much damage. The addition of the words 'secret ingredient, whilst offputting to the experienced & savvy psychonaut, may be the reverse to someone new to the scene, easily gulled by the 'legitamacy' of the product.

[Alfa]

Originally Posted by podge

Where as if swim see's mysterious "happy-E caps" with different type's named "trip-E" and "speed-E" and other stupid name's like that with no active ingrediants written on them swim just stays away.

Happy caps have their ingredients listed. I have no clue what you mean.

There is a big differentiation between products like bionix, nxt-phase which have a mixture of EU approved ingredients in them and products with research chemicals in there.
In the first I can see only a protection of formula and protection against banning. Irritating yes. Because I'd like to know what SWIM is ingesting. But other than that. I see no problems with it.

Research chemicals in products is a different matter.

How many consumers of such products will know what 10-bromo-2-(2-chlorophenyl)- 3,6- diazabicyclo[5.4.0]undeca- 2,8,10,12-tetraen-5-one is?

Or even more important; how many will even care to find out?

Does it really matter for a consumer if a producer lists 1,3-Dimethylpentylamine instead of geranamine?

Governments will most likely care to find out what these products are and will quickly ban them.
Remember how quickly the product explosion was banned in Holland after several forum members released it's analysis, which showed it to be methylone.
Now compare that with piperazine products which have been sold for a long while under the disguise of being a pepper extract. After all those years of legal sales, governments could see that there where no fatalities form the sales of piperazines. The sales numbers are so high(millions of doses) that it has become pretty hard for governments to deny this. This is a very different situation.

Make no mistake: there is no ideal situation here. Knowing what substance(s) in there will shorten the life span of a product a lot. Governments will simply ban it.
If you want research chemicals to be openly available, then you are against the listing/openly marketing of such ingredients. If you want to know what's in there, then you accept it will only be available to you for a very limited time.

Take the analysis of neo-doves for example: the outcome is unsure. Maybe it is Metamfepramone. Maybe a derative of such or something other completely new. Anyway; what does it tell you when a package lists a completely novel compound?

Whether ingredients are listed on the package or not, the producer of research chemical products or legal highs have a large responsibility. Responsibility about what they offer to their customers, consumers. To the world.
IMHO there's quite a difference between companies:
There are established companies that have been around for decades and new 'fast buck' companies. A established company can be expected to be around for a while.
There are companies which do extensive testing before they release anything and companies that will just drop something on the market after a few internal trials.
There are companies who seem to carefully market their products within legal boundaries and there are companies who advertise drug consumption as loud as they can. Preferably with names and claims relating to smack, cocaine, etc.

I think a established company will have far more respect for human live and for the liability that comes from a research chemical gone wrong. Simply put; if a product goes wrong and people die, that will come back to an established company. The company will probably get raided and the owners will be prosecuted. History has showed this scenario many times.

I think that it's not a question of whether producers should list the ingredients or not, but a question of which substances should be and should not in mystery products. And within what framework. i.e. a research chemical product should be tested in various dose ranges by many hundreds of people, before releasing it. It should carry precautions where needed.

God help us all if Desoxypipradrol or Diphenyl-2-Pyrrolidinyl-Methanol turn out to be D.O.M.S. or some other mystery blend. While at the other end I find it acceptable when reasonable doses of 1,3-dimethylamylamine are being used as such. There is quite a difference between the risks and history of use.

Reputation Comments on this post:

Well presented views on legal high ingredients

[podge]

Swim was given a booklet in a headshop with happy-E cap info which had a written passage about the effects of the different types but there was no ingrediants given and when swim asked for more info from the staff they couldnt track anything down and didnt know anything about it. Swim may have had to buy the product before he was given an ingrediants listing on the inside but at that stage money has been wasted. Does holland have stricter regulations on head/smart shop owners and a requirement for full info to be given ? The happy-E caps are just an example.....the spice ice formula is apparently under wraps or is this more bullshit being pedddled by headshop workers?

[Alfa]

happy caps have their ingredient on the back. I dont know about flyers. I'm not familliar with spice ice. Sounds like a spice rip off to me. It's things like that which puts me off. I dont know if Holland has stricter regulations for packaging. We're all in the EU. So it must be simular.

Please note that I do think that there is a big problem when dangerous compounds are used. Listed or unlisted.

[starboy]

Hi

Somebody has asked me to post here, forgive if this post jumps around a bit, am writing it on the fly, I want to give an overview of where we are coming from and my thoughts.

My name is Matt Bowden, I set up the industry in New Zealand. I represent Stargate and STANZ.

We worked with our government and redeveloped our primary drug legislation in our first steps forward away from prohibition policy towards regulated supply of safer alternatives. We had had a real problem with increased prevalence of smokable crystal meth and it caused a number of deaths etc. We decided to take a fresh approach to the problem.

My comments are as follows:

Firstly, are these companies responsive when you write to them?
Yeah, I logged in to reply to posts, so some of us are just like you, whether we are from EU countries or from the other side of the planet. I have met some the industry members in the NL and many of them are also responsible players. I have also met some industry players with very little knowledge of safety, and many with very low product knowledge.


On labelling:
When we started labelling our products with enough information that consumers could work out what they were getting, we created a whole range of copycat competitors, so I can understand why people don't do it.

We had exercised a lot of restraint in who we supplied to, pills were only available to existing drug users and we had evidence of safety for the ingredient. With these two conditions met we coined the term "harm reduction solution" as it was proving to draw people away from smokable crystal meth which was causing problems in our country.

[For something to be a harm reduction solution it has to be demostrably reducing harm. If it is being marketed hard to people who were not previously using drugs, or there is no evidence of safety of the product, then it is NOT really a harm reduction solution .. is it?]

We learned from this that an unregulated market will pursue saturation.

The answer to restricting your market and protecting your IP should not be to mislabel the product, that doesn't work for consumers, regulators or health agencies. You could supply detailed pharmacological data on the compound as a better option. Many new compounds won't have this data though.

Different marketers will have different values and different concepts of social responsibility, you don't want to be too heavy handed with them, but some of them probably shouldn't be selling things like this, we need some sort of standards around industry so you know what you are dealing with.

On regulation:
Ideally a licensing system is called for where retailers and marketers are licensed based on whether they meet certain criteria and products need to be manufactured to certain standards. This is called a risk management system. We are developing an international standard for manufacture of social tonics which sits somewhere between therapeutic goods and medicines. We are also developing regulations and laws around how a social tonics industry can be run.

I don't usually suggest heavy regulation, but we trialled a method of industry self regulation and by putting standards in place you simply create a business opportunity for the person who wants to play outsde the rules.

On safety data:
Secondly new products should be properly tested before being marketed, if there is a compound that has had no relationship with human beings in the past then is it really ethical to start feeding it to people without any safety testing? What do we know about it? Should there be an independant body checking that each marketer is meeting the right standards?

Is it OK also to hide what is in it so nobody even knows what they are getting?

The answer to that question relies again on how much is known about the compound.

If there is little knowledge, then it is high risk and consumers should at least be made aware of it. There are a number of additional steps a marketer should take if he is heading down this route, to check the medical history and background and other data of each customer before they consume anything. In litigious territories the ons is surely on the marketer to take these steps to inform the consumer, but in areas where legal boundaries are blurred, consumers need to beware!

In NZ our government's experts have said, and I agree with them, that risk analysis need to be carried out first on new compounds before they are allowed to be sold as social tonics. If people are buying research chemicals and eating them, they are taking the risks themselves, but this isn't really good enough. You and I know and the supplier who is selling phenethylamine and tryptamine derivatives by the gram know that these things are being consumed by humans so a higher degree of care needs to be exercised.

Does the customer really know what risks they are taking?

A pragmatist looks at it and sees that substance use is a widespread human behaviour and so the role of industry and government working together is to develop standards put practices in place to minimise risk and to bring all the players in the market up to a standard.

These are some thoughts anyway.

I would advise consumers that if a supplier will not tell you what is in their products at all, or if they have new ingredients, then the risks are higher.

The minimum requirement we ask retailers to meet when supplying these products is on the flowchart here:

http://www.stargate.org.nz/pages/flowchart.html

• Is the customer an adult?

• Are they an experienced drug user?

• Are they on any centrally active medicines or other drugs?

• Are they possibly pregnant or breastfeeding or do they have any other medical conditions?

• Have they used these products before?

Only when you know the answer to these questions do you know whether to sell the product to the customer.

Feel free to make any comments.

Thanks everybody

Matt Bowden
stargate.org.nz

Reputation Comments on this post:

	excellent info, answers & contribution
	thanks for taking the time to share this information on this subject

[Alfa]

Matt, thank you for joining us.

You have a remarkable position in New Zealand, where the government (thusfar) allows the sales of Piperazine stimulants and seems to take a much more objective approach than most other countries. In most countries there seems to be a consensus that anything psychoactive should be banned, because it is psychoactive or is used as such.

I guess you are not just very lucky with that approach of your government, but that it has also been quite an achievement. I by the looks of it will keep on to need a lot of effort.
If piperazines get banned, then there will be a wide gaping gap in the market there. And it will be filled. But by what? There are quite some worrisome compounds that could be used to fill that gap.
I am sure that most companies (if any) will not have the financial basis to do testing according to medicine testing protocols.

What are your views on this?

Ephedrine containing products are illegal in your country for quite some time now. If I remember correctly they where for sale there years ago. Quite a few of them contain(ed) ephedrine alkaloid derivatives or where spiked with ephedrine alkaloids.
Not many people may agree with me, but I regard the recreational use of ephedrine alkaloid containing products as relatively safe, if it is occasional use and with cautions similar to your piperazine flow chart. Especially in comparison to the use of amphetamines.
What do you think of these products? I assume you must have sold them.

[starboy]

You have a remarkable position in New Zealand

We are a small country of about 4 million people but we are not connected by land to any other country, we are not part of Australia! We are not involved in the war in Iraq, we don't have strong ties with USA.

What this means is that we have a great deal of flexibility, we can try something new. In fact the onus is on small developed countries like us to develop and trial new policy models, to then use as case studies, because if we can't get it right here, what hope is there of somewhere bigger pulling it off.

We have a strong commitment to evidence based policy making in drug policy, certainly under the current Minister, hopefully we won't get a birdbrain in next time around and we can stick with science.

I am sure that most companies (if any) will not have the financial basis to do testing according to medicine testing protocols.

What are your views on this?

Industry has had dialogue with the Expert Advisory Committee on Drugs who advise the minister and we are in agreement that, as their last advice stated, the onus should be on marketers to show safety data prior to marketing new products.

There are some marketers who seek out new RCs and may or may not understand what will be required of them, then there are others who may have the resources, but laws of economics provide that if you create an environment where there is consumer demand for some commodity, and you set the regulations right, not too tight, not too loose, then that vacuum of opportunity will crystallise into products.

There are projects underway to join up the dots. I'm setting up one foundation to do it, if nothing else, pharmaceutical companies will soon fill the gap with their backlog of suitable technology. I can feel them waiting in the wings for us to take the initial re-entry social resistance heat so they can jump in the slipstream.

ephedrine

I used to be invovled with "GENESIS DISKOTONIK" which is now called "KRYPTONITE" years ago. Around 1998 the laws changed. What do I think of ephedrine? Compared to BZP, and I hate to say this because I'd like to say that herbal products are safer than synthetic, but there have been no deaths on BZP alone over maybe 10 million exposures but there have been a number of deaths with ephedrine alone. I have technical staff who can explain why it is too ... any pharmacologists here?

Do I think it should be illegal?

We'd need to look at the track record for what happens when we make things illegal, I guess.

Reputation Comments on this post:

Good post. Welcome to the forum.

[Thirdedge]

Just to add to Benga's first post: Perhaps a far greater concern than unlisted ingredients is inconsistant ingredients eg: products where the first run is laced with a quality RC (eg: Methylone), then future runs are just Piperazines or herbal.
Even worse still, the case of Red Dawn where only some runs appear to be spiked with DXM, hence some users get no real effects, others get blown away.
This kind of practice surely risks someone who has had minimal effect from a product taking a larger dose next time around.

[starboy]

And then there are standards requried in homologation, e.g, if you are mixing a batch where the active level on an ingredient is 250mg you need different level of equipment than if you are mixing something with an active dosage of 25mg or 2.5mg.

We found homologation of dosage at the mixing stage to be a problem, some companies would believe that they are doing everything right, but not random testing end product and we learned that in some places teh mix was varied and ingredients would settle out differently in the machines, so the levels of active ingredient vary within the batch.

The answer to this is to adopt higher quality standards for manufacture.

[6oclockpill]

God help us all, then. The New Zealand Herald reports

[London Underground] Neuro Blast pills are being investigated by the police national drug intelligence bureau after scientific testing found they contained a stimulating substance called diphenyl prolinol [= diphenyl-2-pyrrolidinyl-methanol].

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/topic/stor...ectid=10473827

[starboy]

^ True, unless one of the herbal extracts listed is active.

Note from this nzherald (nz's best firestarter) that the "trial only" product which the person had an adverse reaction to and the commercial product called "neuroblast" reportedly containing diphenylprolinol are not necessarily the same product.

The "trial only" product which was consumed before the adverse reaction was not otherwise marketed as far as we know.

Reputation Comments on this post:

good points

[Pino]

In swims eyes a herbal product can potentially be as dangerous as a non herbal product. The simplest argument is, that the nastiest poisons come from mother nature. On the other side, the more nastier poisons of nature are mostly designed to be extremely painful and are not exactly fun. (Like resin) So swim would say the change there is a really dangerous substance in a herbal mix is somewhat lower.

However natural drugs have a whole range of chemicals in them. And while most of these chemicals don't add to the high, they can have potential dangerous effects. Like causing cancer on the long term, because many plants have chemicals in them, which are able to manipulate DNA or are storing for some reason heavy metals. In a well produced chemical drugs, there is only one chemical to deal with. Or a combination. These causes the high and the possible harmful other effects. This of course simplify matters.

Herbal drugs aren't 'designed' like chemical one's are. Some are byproducts, some are defenses against insects or a defense against animals. They aren't optimized to cause a high in humans, but is optimized to cause damage to his natural enemy. The chemical drugs is probably optimized to cause a desirable high. Because it sells. Hence the change is, that the chemical causes more desirable effects than the natural one.

Swim just want to know on both type of drugs, whats in them. Natural producers can put loads of myristicin in their products or worse, which I definitely don't want to ingest.

[Benga]

yes....with the new data on synthetic cannabinoids and recent cascade of bans we can surely include quite a few incense / smoking mixes in this discussion...

b

[Alfa]

Originally Posted by Triple7

For how long was this kept as secret? I mean the active ingredient? What about one and half years? Two? What I am thinking of, is that some webshops use same tactics relabeling or renaming ingredients or to just leave it out to probably slow down a ban to make some more cash. (Or then they just fear someone will sell their new XTC recepie or whatever). When thinking of another cannabinoid, it seems it haven't been banned and that one isn't sold under strange names. So relabeling or whatever doesn't help in the long run. It seems that at this stage, for something has to get banned, it has to be sold a lot to the public (ehh? not really a new). Spice is sold in lot more quantity than the other synthetic cannabibnoids. Of all those substances that could have been in those plants, THC pharm were probably looking for JHW and other cannabinoids meaning someone told them to look for that.

Anything we can learn from this? Is it worth (and right) to keep ingredients secret from their customers?

The question whether companies should keep their ingredients hidden, is very ambiguous. One could take the moral high road and state that it is unethical for companies to hide their ingredients, but that would simply lead to a ban of most of the effective products available. So if you enjoy the availability of psychoactives, this is not a realistic position and possibly a hypocritical position. On the other side there is also the problem of producers that release dangerous compounds, like London Underground's neuroblast and Neogranic's bizarre mixes of research chemicals proved.
Bottom line seems to come down on the risk one is willing to take and the ethical standards of the producer. This thread seems to indicate that some producers do research the safety of their products.

[dantesinfernoo]

Swim has taken SPECIAL GOLD bath salt and became quite additive to it ..