Article Image

IPFS News Link • Drugs and Medications

Whatever's in Synthetic Marijuana, It's the Opposite of Chill

• http://www.wired.com

Yesterday in Brooklyn, 33 people from a single neighborhood wound up in the hospital after smoking synthetic marijuana. Those afflicted could barely hold themselves up. Some were outright sprawled across the pavement. Bystanders said it looked like a zombie flick. Cops and newspapers called the culprit K2.

Maybe the people using it used the same slang, but then again, maybe not. Spice, Scooby Snax, Black Mamba, Bliss. Not that it matters. Synthetic marijuana is a catch-all term for a huge variety of chemicals engineered to mimic weed. Problem is, these chemicals are way too good at their job. Another problem: The people using them usually have no idea what they're actually smoking, so figuring out the right dose can be difficult—and dangerous.

Synthetic marijuana has its origins in the early 1990s, when a Clemson University chemist named John Huffman synthesized a group of chemicals that interacted with cellular mechanisms in the same way as the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana—tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC. Huffman wasn't trying to get anyone high. He was trying to help other researchers figure out how the brain worked. Specifically, the network of neural receptors activated by cannabinoids like THC.

But people love drugs, so people took Huffman's work (published openly in academic journals; he even wrote a book) and started manufacturing. And for many years, it was legal. That's partly because even though Huffman's synthetics activated the same cannabinoid receptors as THC—and users now spray the stuff on plant parts to smoke just like weed—chemically, they looked nothing like it. Not until March of 2011 did the DEA classify synthetic marijuana as a Schedule 1 narcotic.

By definition, a Schedule 1 drug has a high potential for abuse, has no medical value, and is considered dangerous. Natural marijuana probably does not deserve the classification. "Calling it synthetic marijuana does a disservice, because people tend to think of marijuana as not very harmful," says Jenny Wiley, a behavioral pharmacologist at Virginia Commonwealth University medical center.

Part of the problem is synthetic marijuana is much better at being a drug than natural marijuana. When pharmacologists are testing drugs, they place radioactive labels on top of a cell's receptors. Then they watch and see how good the chemical is at displacing that label and binding to the receptor site. "The chemicals used in various synthetic marijuanas are able to bind to the receptor site at lesser concentrations than THC," says Wiley.


AzureStandard