College crowd smokes ‘spice’ that imitates pot (News and Observer)
As college students return to the Triangle, some are cracking open lip balm-size jars and plastic bags of a legal herb product that mimics the effects of marijuana.
K2, or Spice, is a lab-made leafy green drug that looks and smells like oregano, with hints of blueberry, citrus and other flavors. The designer drug is showing up at tobacco and head shops, misleadingly labeled as “incense.” The labels also inform buyers that the contents are not fit for human consumption, but behind closed doors the “incense” is being puffed as a legal alternative to marijuana.
K2 and similar products have been outlawed in six states this year, including Tennessee, and six other states are considering banning the products. The U.S. Marine Corps has asked shops near its North Carolina bases not to sell the product to their troops, and the man who created the drug in a research lab warns of such side effects as increased heart rate and blood pressure and unpredictable effects on mood.
The synthetic drug was created in the early 1990s, but started showing up in tobacco and convenience stores in the United States late last year.
Bert Wood, chief executive officer of the N.C. Partnership for a Drug Free North Carolina, had to Google “K2” when he was asked about his organization’s stand on the product.
“I have never heard of it,” Wood said. “But here’s the big picture: Since cave people hit two sticks together to get sparks, we have looked at ways to feel different. If K2 mimics the effects of getting stoned, then we are not encouraging young people to use it.”
At least one state lawmaker says he intends to introduce legislation early next year to ban the product.
Sen. William Purcell of Laurinburg sponsored a bill in 2009 that outlawed salvia, another herbal product, with hallucinogenic effects comparable to those of LSD and psilocybin.
Purcell said he heard about K2 a couple of months ago. He says if he’s re-elected this fall, he will investigate K2.
“I’ll probably take a look at it and get more information,” he said from his Scotland County home. “Then we will see if something needs to be done about it.”
‘Selling like crazy’
In the meantime, the drug is flying off the shelves of Triangle stores that carry it.
“It’s selling like crazy,” said R.J. Crumpler, an employee at the Hazmat shop on Franklin Street, near UNC-Chapel Hill “More than cigarettes, more than pipe tobacco, posters or T-shirts.”
The prices vary, depending on the potency of the product, but K2 usually sells for $20 to $40 a gram.
Crumpler figures the store sells at least 20 grams a day. “It’s more than that on some days,” he said.
Blake Tippett, 26, is one of Hazmat’s regular K2 customers. Blake is back in school at UNC-Chapel Hill this semester after leaving in 2007 when he hurt his back and underwent two surgeries.
Puffing for pain relief
Tippett said he finds it “rather interesting” that K2 is legal but thinks that will change quickly. Last week, he purchased about 6 grams of “Black Mamba,” another powerful herb product.
Tippett, who wants to work as a journalist when he graduates, said he’s not happy about the prospect of K2 being outlawed.
He said he smokes synthetic weed because it helps relieve the pain from back injuries that ruptured one disc and herniated another.
“I’m in the category of those people who smoke because it has helped to make me a healthy, 200-pound person able to walk around without wearing a back brace,” he said.
Tippett said K2 and synthetic marijuana products like Black Mamba have helped his back pain “more than any other opiate under the sun.”
A potent, brief high
N.C. State University sophomores Ethan Haynes and Kevin Catts haven’t given much thought to the potential medical benefits of synthetic marijuana. They say they puff on K2 because it’s fun.
Haynes and Catts strolled into the Kitsch smoke shop off Hillsborough Street last week and went straight to the front counter where the shop features a full line of the herbal incense products. They pored over the K2 offerings: Standard, Spice, Blueberry, Blonde and Funky Monkey, before choosing the Summit brand, which sells for $30 a gram.
Haynes says that students allover NCSU’s campus are puffing on K2 and that he smokes it about once a week. He said the high kicks in about a minute after a couple of puffs. The high, although more potent than marijuana’s, is short-lived – about 30 minutes to an hour.
The substance in K2 that mimics the effects of marijuana is known as JWH-018. It was first developed in the summer of 1993 by John W. Huffman, an organic chemist at Clemson University.
From JWH-018 to K2
Huffman developed the substance while looking for new pharmaceutical products similar to tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. The J, W, and H in the substance’s name are Huffman’s initials. The “018” acknowledges that the compound was the 18th cannabinoid that the lab developed. (Cannabinoid refers to the organic chemical substances in cannabis, or marijuana.)
Last week, Huffman said his work did not lead to the development of any new legal medications. He did not receive a patent for his invention, and he did not sell the formula, which creates “a pale amber goo.”
So how did the compound wind up being sprayed as a light mist on dried leaves and sold as synthetic weed on the Internet and in head shops and tobacco stores across the country?
“I assume that someone with some scientific knowledge found it in a publication in a scientific journal,” Huffman said in an e-mail message last week. “It is inevitable that psychotropic compounds will find their way into commerce. There are greedy and irresponsible individuals worldwide. This is just another example.”
Huffman added that he receives no royalties from the sales of K2 or any other product that uses his formula.
Terrie Sonya of Granite City, Ill., offers K2 for sale at her website, K24Sale.com. Sonya, who also sells the product out of a liquor store she owns, claims that she did not know people were smoking it as an alternative to marijuana.
“I really don’t know what people are doing with it when they take it out of the door,” Sonya said. “We market it as incense and sell it as incense.”
Sonya said she started selling K2 in October and the product quickly outpaced her store’s alcohol sales. She thinks pending legislation in Illinois to ban K2 would shut her business down.
Huffman described the effects of the substance he developed as “considerably more potent” than marijuana. He warned that the product increases users’ heart rate and blood pressure and has unpredictable effects on one’s mood.
So far, there has been no research to determine the long-term effects of smoking K2.
Side effects reported
But last month a New York Times blog fielded comments from readers who reported experiencing seizures, paranoia and heart problems after smoking the fake weed. The blog writer, Malcolm Gay, stated that the comments “are likely representative of the over 500 reports made to poison control centers across the country this year.”
Not every tobacco or head shop near a Triangle college campus sells K2. Smoke Rings, just across the street from Hazmat on Franklin Street, doesn’t sell the stuff. Neither does Sam’s Quik Shop on Ninth Street, near Duke University in Durham.
Many of the head shops on Hillsborough Street carry the product, but their employees and managers declined to comment.
After Catts and Haynes, the NCSU students, bought that bag of K2 last week, they mulled the possibilities of their next legal weed purchase.
“Funky Monkey,” Haynes suggested to Catts. “We should try that the next time.”
BY THOMASI MCDONALD – Staff Writer
Read more: http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/08/29/653430/college-crowd-smokes-spice-that.html#storylink=misearch#ixzz0y6kilqK4
