Chemical Change in Synthetic Marijuana Suspected of Causing Illnesses
npr.org
npr.org
The 'solution' is simple, but politically unfeasible. (Ok, if it's unfeasible, it's not a solution.) Legalize several well-tested drugs (cannabis with max. THC, MDMA, ...) where the side effects to public health and safety are acceptable. Outlaw the rest. So strange that alcohol and smoking are legal, while many lesser evils are illegal.
It should tunnel the masses into the legalized produce (they are looking for, and getting, the thrill anyway), while bringing markets back to normal. As a added benifit, normal markets bring less criminal attention and need less government intervention. (For the Europeans: VAT as a bonus.)
But I agree, legalise a few relatively well understood drugs and this whole problem mostly goes away. There are a small number of people genuinely interested in experimenting with new compounds, most simply want to use a few of the popular drugs without getting in trouble, losing their job etc, or don't have a way of getting what they se as the 'real' stuff.
And the experimenters aren't usually interested in cannabinoids.
Marinol is Syntheic Marijuana, these designer drugs like "Spice" and "K2" are not.
That would be synthetically produced THC, not synthetic marijuana. We're talking about a product designed to mimic cannabis, using synthetic cannabinoids. I don't think it's unreasonable to call it synthetic cannabis.
If you want to call it "fake cannabis" that's fine, but then we need to distinguish it from the people just selling oregano and calling it weed...
-- edit --
Incidentally, on the UK RC scene these things are referred to as 'Blends', as they are often blends of multiple cannabinoids infused into plant material, which is often a blend of different plants (marshmallow and damiana are popular). Further, 'reputable' vendors of these blends publish what substances they've used and how much by weight. This is very unlikely to be the case with a bag of "Atomic Fallout" or whatever the f*ck it is from your local gas station or head shop though.
Some people buy the cannabinoids pure and make their own blends, or vapourise them directly, which is a very dodgy and OD-prone business, but at least then you know roughly hat you're getting and how much.
For the cannabinoids themselves, certainly. Now, what's a good way to refer to the products that are sold in head shops and all sorts of other places? They are a blend of plant materials laced with a one or more synthetic cannabinoids.
Synthetic cannabis does not seem wrong here.
Study the rest. The ban has brought many bad things, but it's also brought good alternatives. The 2C family, for example, arose because of the ban on LSD/mescaline/mushrooms, and is considered to have similar safety profile as the originals. Certain benzofurans (5/6-APB, APDB, MAPB, EAPB, etc) receive bigger love than MDMA because of fewer side effects and because they "bring back the magic" that prolonged MDMA use tends to dull out.
The 2C-x drugs certainly did not arise from the prohibition of older psychedelics. The man who invented them (along with MDMA earlier) was Alexander Shulgin. It was his life's work to discover and test these new drugs. I seriously doubt it was in reaction to prohibition.
2C-x as far as we know does not have a similar safety profile to the drugs you have mentioned in general. LSD is known to be safe in at least 1000x the normal dose. The highest dose in the literature for 2C-B is 5x the normal dose. Certain drugs in the series such as 2C-P have a very low safety margin[1].
[1] https://www.erowid.org/library/books_online/pihkal/pihkal036...
Certainly he dedicated his life to discovery and testing of all sorts of interesting things, and his legacy is enormous, but I didn't think that one was his invention.
I'd love to see a citation for that
A normal dose of LSD is measured in micrograms, so the 1000x statement is at least very conservative.
https://www.erowid.org/chemicals/lsd/lsd_death.shtml
Ok, well maybe not 'safe', but people have taken that amount and survived. It is certainly not something I would recommend.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tusko#The_elephant_on_LSD
> "Tusko" was also the name of a male Indian elephant at the Oklahoma City Zoo. On August 3, 1962,[4] researchers from the University of Oklahoma injected (human use involves oral ingestion) 297 mg of LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) to him, which is over 1,000 times the dose typical of human recreational use. Within five minutes he collapsed to the ground and one hour and forty minutes later he died. It is believed that the LSD was the cause of his death, although some speculate that the drugs the researchers used in an attempt to revive him may have contributed to his death.
And then the other big issue with safety is when you get a white powder it's impossible to tell what it is without testing. People snort something they think is one drug, turns out they just took a massive of another.
I don't reckon many people would bother with them if they could buy LSD though.
I find some novel psychedelics interesting, specifically anything that might not last quite so long.
For what's it's worth many people think they have a higher risk of causing HPPD.
That said, when they were legal here, they were rather excellent...
So here's a question - I had assumed that the SERT-dumping action of MDMA took place in the brain and did not spread masses of serotonin to the rest of the body, is this correct? Or does MDMA trigger serotonin floods that do get out to the system in general?
The drug (be it MDMA or xAPB) is swimming around the whole system and is therefore free to act on the 5HT2b receptors present in the heart itself, which could promote valve mutation. Is this true for the serotonin as well?
It's not true for serotonin. Serotonin is to be released, taken back and metabolized locally, in and around the synapse. It doesn't travel around the body, at least in significant amounts, as hormones do.
Prohibition is what is causing this problem in the first place.
If you legalize marijuana, would be no profit to be made in coming up with new synthetics and without a profit motive, only researchers would do it.
For example, since the end of alcohol prohibition, how many cases are there of people being blinded by methyl alcohol from bathtub gin?
It came from an argument (in my head ;) based on the proposition that you would ideally internalize adverse effects in the price of a good. So alcohol-users would pay for alcohol related mischief, LSD for LSD, etc. You would need a product specific VAT for the larger categories. Can't really implement that for N designer drugs, so I thought 'ban the rest for easy of acceptance'. Your effect is more beautiful though.
The problem with synthetic cannabinoids in particular is that (because of their relative popularity compared to other "Research Chemicals" or "Legal Highs") they get banned quickly so the makers have to find a new way to skirt around the law.
This has resulted in lots of molecules being picked up from research literature that have never been tried in a living creature, let alone studied in humans. And some of the newest ones are totally off-piste, tweaks and modifications made to these already untested molecules such that cannabinoids are produced which can't even be found in the literature.
There's also the drive to make stronger and stronger synthetic 'weed' and that causes problems too. It's not really possible to properly OD on the real thing. It's easy with synthetics.
Something something legalisation and regulation, demand, and supply.
The claims of dealers lacing softer drugs with harder ones is classic DEA FUD. Drug dealers are generally not the smarted bunch but they know not to cut a cheap drug with an expensive one.
That being said, a common DEA lie was that cocaine was being cut with rat poison. This actually started happening in South Africa where it caused many deaths because the South African drug dealers thought that the Americans were doing it when in fact it was just invented by the DEA to scare people off of coke.
What possible evidence do you have to make you think that somebody put meth in there?
So - I know that the "broken glass in X" is DEA FUD, but idiot street dealers don't necessarily think in the same terms as you and I.
Also - if you're synthesising your own chems, cost isn't an issue, you're just buying reagents.