Common Side Effects: Side effects of the drug include elevated mood, relaxation, altered perception, symptoms of psychosis, extreme anxiety, confusion, paranoia, hallucinations, violent behavior, suicidal thoughts, rapid heart rate, raised blood pressure, vomiting, kidney damage, and seizures. Synthetic marijuana often contains a mixture of dried leaves from traditional herbal plants. They are various colors, including green, brown, blonde, and red, and often sold in small packets approximately two by three inches.
The packets are often colorful foil packs or plastic zip bags. Some online sellers of legal fake weed products do so with disclaimers like "not for human consumption. Fake weed works on the same brain cell receptors as THC or deltatetrahydrocannabinol the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana that gets you high. It is typically smoked, brewed in tea, or vaped. Many of these products are legally marketed as "herbal incense" or "potpourri. Some people who use herbal buds say that it produces a high similar to that of marijuana, but it doesn't last as long.
Others experience a relaxed feeling, rather than the "head high" that real marijuana produces. Also of note is the "harsh" taste, which people say "makes your throat burn and your lungs ache" long after you smoke. Since there are no standards for making, packaging, or selling synthetic weed, it's impossible to know the type and amount of chemicals in each product as well as what the fake weed will do to you.
They have all been found to contain various synthetic cannabinoids, or chemicals produced in laboratories. Originally, fake marijuana products contained a chemical called HU, which has a molecular structure very similar to THC. Because HU is listed as a Schedule I controlled substance in the United States, these fake weed products were manufactured and sold only in Europe. Since then, new synthetic cannabinoid agonists have been created.
They are too numerous to list. Some are similar in structure to THC; others are not. Some are classified as controlled substances. By using different synthetic marijuana mixtures, manufacturers are able to continue to legally market their products in the United States when another formulation becomes illegal.
According to the DEA, the majority of these chemical compounds are produced in Asia with no regulations or standards. Some of these chemicals are still legal. However, since synthetic marijuana first hit the market, more than 20 of these compounds have become controlled in some way at the federal level.
This places them in the same federal category as heroin, crack cocaine, and marijuana. Many people buy into the idea that fake marijuana products are safe since the chemicals are "legal" and contain "natural" ingredients. However, this has proven to be false with multiple cases of severe, unexplained bleeding or bruising, and some deaths. Some of the fake marijuana products sold commercially claim to contain herbs traditionally used for medicinal purposes, including:. However, one study revealed that some of the herbal ingredients listed by the manufacturers could not be found in the products.
Beyond the synthetic cannibinoid HU, which is used by scientists to identify cannibinoid receptors in the brain and study the effects deltatetrahydrocannabinol deltaTHC , there are no approved or off-label medical uses for synthetic marijuana.
While research is advancing, the effect synthetic marijuana products may have on the human body is largely unknown. To date, few studies have been published testing the effects of the chemicals. Within the DEA report, it's noted that overdoses have caused fatal heart attacks.
Similarly, acute kidney injury resulting in hospitalization and dialysis have been connected to these synthetics. One study compared the level of impairment for drivers who were arrested for intoxicated driving. One group had smoked synthetic cannabinoids and those in the other group had used marijuana. Three of those four died abruptly, like Eckhardt.
The first conversation should be in a relaxed setting, "before something happens," David Ray, co-founder and director of Number 16, a residential rehab program outside Boston, told TODAY Thursday. IE 11 is not supported. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. Share this —. Follow today. More Brands. The potency of these chemicals outstrips that of most recreational drugs, often by a factor of an active dose of street heroin might be mg and a typical line of cocaine might contain mg, but most variants of spice are active at just 1mg, making accurate dosing impossible.
Spice is made in China and imported to the UK by criminal gangs, who dissolve the powder in acetone and spray it on to herbal matter such as damiana. The volatile solvent evaporates, leaving the plant matter infused and ready to smoke. The chaos seen in city centres in recent years, with smokers sprawled out on benches or paralysed on pavements, was caused because batches of the drug vary wildly in strength and content: one might contain a mix, while another could be as high as — meaning a single draw on a joint might incapacitate users instantly.
Solutions to the spice phenomenon exist, but they require dedication, money, and innovative thinking. The only innovation in recent years was a suggestion by police and the Home Office to reclassify spice from class C to class A, thereby further criminalising an already marginalised and vulnerable group: fining and jailing spice-drunk beggars, like a Hogarth print for the 21st century. An essential first step to addressing the problem would be extensive investment in supported housing, and the reinstatement of cancelled drug treatment services.
While heroin and benzodiazepenes, also often taken by street homeless users, have a formalised detox pathway, spice and other drug users should be offered residential rehab, with counselling and support to help them understand and break their cycles of use. The use of spice is not due to some some individualised moral failing on the part of the users. If it were, its use would be seen at every stratum of society. It is, rather, a natural and inevitable — indeed rational — response to a systemic failure in social care and drugs laws, with poverty at the ultimate root.
This system is important for critical functions such as temperature control, hunger and reproduction. It also plays very important roles in the brain for executive function, which is what we use to take in information from the environment, evaluate it, and determine a course of action. The researchers who figured out how make these synthetics published their findings in scientific journals and illicit manufacturers learned from those articles. A: People are dying all the time from synthetic cannabinoids.
They can be up to times as potent as the THC in cannabis. Though this is a natural system in the body, marijuana or cannabinoids basically hijack the system and take over.
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