Spice

[LadyShea]

I am an old fogey and not up on the drugs kids are doing these days, but Spice seems to be causing issues serious enough to get headlines (at least around here several deaths and hospitalizations by the dozens), so came on my radar that way. It's some kind of synthetic marijuana but unlike actual pot, can cause hallucinations, delusions, violence, and sudden death.

No regular old stoner I have ever known would want a high that includes anything like that...they want to chill out and laugh. WTF is this about?

ETA: The toxicity is probably related to and varies with the manufacturing processes. Like any back-shed lab made drug, there is no way for users to know exactly what they are getting.

[Pan Narrans]

The Spice extends life. The Spice expands consciousness. The Spice is vital to space travel.

[Ymir's blood]

Spice spice baby!

[Ari]

Spice is an umbrella term for a bunch of different synthetic canabinoids that were developed around 2003 and still in research. Many of these synthetics are full-agonists unlike THC which is only partial. Which means they activate receptors extremely easily, and as a result are much more potent than THC. This much more aggressive action combined with an extremely pure drug often leads people to get much higher than they were expecting, leading to panic. These drugs also don't have the alkaloid profile of cannabis, which also includes CBD, another canabinoid which has been shown to have a buffering effect on THC. It's the combination of being a partial-agonist and combined with even small amounts of CBD that gives natural cannabis it's extremely safe profile. These new drugs lack both these safe guards and actually have dangerous dosage levels.

From my understanding, a good portion of spice in manufactured in China and is generally pretty pure. It's the bonus of it being a less regulated drug than others and the main reason it's made the rounds is because it's legal in more places. These synthetics need more testing, and could actually be medically useful at controlled doses unfortunately the massive drug war against THC has launched them into the public before this testing.

One of the other dangers to any new research chemical is we don't fully understand how it interacts with various levels of different enzymes. So it's possible people might lack enzymes that can break some of these synthetics down, allowing them to last longer or even become more dangerous.

The ironic thing, is that due to the buffering nature of CBD, combining an illegal drug with these legal drugs might actually make the legal drug safer to use.