Hacker News Reader

Comment by dgan | Hacker News Reader

While everyone is talking about heroin/cocaïne, i think big winners will be steroid users, finally a perfect way to assess gear quality

View on HN

"Herbal drugs such as cannabis , i.e. marijuana and hashish, or medicines, anabolic steroids or sexual enhancers are not examined."

:( thanks for information

It's crazy that cannabis users can't have their drugs tested to ensure purity, safety and to confirm they aren't laced with other drugs. But mainly to ensure people aren't smoking dried plant matter with mold or other common problems.

Laced weed is so rare that the entire concept may as well be categorized as a myth.

this may have been true before the rise of artificial cannabinoids, but it's not anymore

Really? There was a vice documentary, but I have not seen any evidence that a significant proportion of weed is laced with synthetic cannabinoids.

Are you sure that is correct for the German market?

I have seen articles about cheap Hungarian weed sprayed with Chinese synthetic "canabis" being sold as spice. Apparently it's stronger and more addictive.

But I must admit I have not double checked it.

Just found a bit here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_cannabinoids

I would love to see the source, I don't think this is a common phenomenon anywhere in the world.

Nor does it particularly make sense to me... why not just spray on delta THC-8 or 9, the whole point of synthetic cannabinoids is they don't show up on drug tests.

Synthetic has different (but similar) effects. Synthetic might be cheaper than THC-8 or 9 for some buyers. I think it's plausible a good amount of users will prefer some synthetics in a blind test.

Living in Germany, I've never heard of it happening, and given the types of people and places I hang out, I think I would have by now.

well I've got news for you https://www.reddit.com/r/berlin/comments/kve48s/spice_laced_...

I didn't say it doesn't happen, ffs. I just implied it's not a common thing that I've even heard of happening.

a while ago I saw a short documentary about German drug dealers spraying their weed with artificial cannabinoids to increase potency. the pseudo-codename they used for it was "haze". in the UK it's very common for dealers to sell two strains of weed, a generic "haze" and one other strain, often "stardog". whether this "haze" is the same thing or not, I do not know, but it's a health concern. it's a hard one to test for as well, because the testing kits I've come across cannot distinguish between artificial and natural cannabinoids

That's just some specific scumbags jumping on a legit weed name - there are lots of haze strains, called things like "amnesia haze", "lemon haze", etc and the haze in their name has nothing to do with anything being sprayed on or anything dodgy at all, they're just normal strains of weed that happen to be very popular.

For years, possibly still now but I don't know, Amnesia Haze was the most popular strain in Amsterdam, and for years now in the UK various hazes are the most popular, and because there's a few similar ones (generally not Amnesia Haze but the milder ones) end dealers often aren't sure which haze they've got but have been told it's a haze and they know the common features/tastes between the common UK hazes they can tell it's one of them but it's hard to guess which.

Go back ten years and the situation was the same with cheese - there were 4-5 cheese-related strains circulating in London for years, and 3 times out of 5 a dealer wouldn't know which kind just that "it's some sort of cheese it's really great" (ofc it's always the absolute best when being sold!). I'm sure if some asshole decided to spray their weed ten years ago they'd have considered calling that stock "cheese" as their code name since nobody hearing them talk about it would think anything. Same with haze now.

Probably because it is so easy to make it grow in a garden or balcony people who want control already have the keys to it.

It is relatively easy to grow, but depending on your climate there’s all sorts of environmental factors that could affect your plants and will persist beyond harvest if not properly remedied. Harvest can be adjusted to increase quantities of CBD, CBN, CBG at the expense of THC. Then there’s terpenes.

Having grown a few runs now as a mere gardener, I’d like to be able to send a sample in the mail for testing to a lab without violating federal (US) law.

Wow that’s frustrating! Here in California the growing and distribution of cannabis is legal (with strict legal requirements for distribution) and there’s all kinds of testing and labeling done for product sold in dispensaries. You can have a lot of faith in those products! It seems far superior to buying some totally unknown products made in a foreign country and illegally imported. I know California is ahead of the curve but it seems so dangerous to continue to force users of these products to go to illegal markets.

To be fair, most cannabis you could get your hands on was being grown in California before legalization, too.

Most steroid users are using product diverted from legitimate drug manufacturers. Countries like Mexico have pretty lax controls for steroids.

So I’d assume quality isn’t much of an issue for steroids if you’re buying steroids in their original packaging.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com