Another cannibal attack.

[RickN]

Tell you what guys, when you have seen several of YOUR friends and family members destroy their lives with drugs and helped bury one of them, then you can talk about lemmings and such.

I have seen drugs turn one of the nicest guys you have ever met into a raving lunatic. I have seen drugs turn a successful business owner into a crack whore. I have seen a once beautiful woman cut off her own hand because she thought it was her hand making her take drugs. Worst of all I helped bury a close friend who ODed. These are only a few of them.

 

[Hobbes]

Discarded wrapper from a packet of Spice, a popular synthetic cannabis mixture.

The war on drugs has a new front, and so far it appears to be a losing one.
Synthetic mimics of marijuana, dissociative drugs and stimulants — such as the “bath salts” allegedly consumed by Randy Eugene, the Florida man shot after a horrific face-eating assault — are growing in popularity and hard to control. Every time a compound is banned, overseas chemists synthesize a new version tweaked just enough to evade a law’s letter.
It’s a giant game of chemical Whack-a-Mole.
“Manufacturers turn these things around so quickly. One week you’ll have a product with compound X, the next week it’s compound Y,” said forensic toxicologist Kevin Shanks of AIT Laboratories, an Indiana-based chemical testing company.
“It’s fascinating how fast it can occur, and it’s fascinating to see the minute changes in chemical structure they’ll come up with. It’s similar, but it’s different,” Shanks continued.

During the last several years, the market for legal highs has exploded in North America and Europe. The names and ostensible purposes are almost comical — Cloud 9 Mad Hatter incense, Zombie Matter Ultra potpourri, Ivory Wave bath salts and Crystal Clean pipe cleaner — but the underlying chemistry is highly sophisticated.
Active ingredients in the drugs are compounds originally synthesized by institutional researchers whose esoteric scientific publications were mined by as-yet-unidentified chemists and neuroscientists working in Asia, where most of the new drugs appear to come from.
One class of popular cannabinoid mimics, for example, was developed by respected Clemson University organic chemist John Huffman, who sought to isolate marijuana’s chemical properties for use in cancer research. Other “legal high” ingredients have similar pedigrees, with designers including researchers at Israel’s Hebrew University and the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer.
While people raised on Reefer Madness-style exaggerations may be wary of claims that “legal high” drugs are dangerous, researchers say they’re far more potent than the originals.
“The results are toxic and very dangerous, especially for vulnerable people — people with previous psychotic episodes — and the young,” said Liana Fattore, a chemist at Italy’s Institute of Neuroscience.
Fattore, whose research specialty is cannabinoids and the new wave of THC mimics, says the new drugs often contain unpredictable mixes of these extra-potent compounds. The same goes for synthetic stimulants and dissociatives.
Reports of psychotic episodes following synthetic drug use are common and have led to a variety of controls in U.S. cities, states and the federal government. The latest ban was approved by the U.S. Senate in May.

So far, however, these aren’t working. In a May 14 Journal of Analytical Toxicology study, Shanks’ team described AIT’s tests of legal drugs purchased since the Drug Enforcement Agency’s 2010 bans of three synthetic stimulants and five synthetic cannabinoids.
A full 95 percent of the products contained compounds not covered by the law. They’d been subtly tweaked so as to possess a different, legal molecular form while performing the same psychopharmaceutical role.
A Toxicology Letters study published earlier in May described similar adjustments in derivatives of pipradol, a controlled stimulant.
“If you want any evidence that drugs have won the drug war, you just need to read the scientific studies on legal highs,” wrote Vaughan Bell at MindHacks, a neuroscience blog that’s covered legal highs in depth.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/05/synthetic-drug-war/

 

[Hobbes]

The recent wave of popularity of synthetic drugs in Florida has been fueled by the fact that they’re legal and easy to buy, experts say.

“When it’s tough to get the real stuff, they turn to the fake stuff,” said Sgt. Jim Baker of the Collier County Sheriff’s Office’s vice and narcotics bureau.

The synthetic substances, used as substitutes for street drugs, are available in Florida stores and through the Internet because manufacturers are marketing them as legal products.

Herbal incense products - commonly known as K2 or Spice - contain chemical compounds that, when smoked, gives a user psychoactive effects similar to marijuana, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

Another line of drugs marketed as “bath salts” - with names like Ivory Wave and Vanilla Sky - were available in Florida stores until a recent temporary statewide ban. These products contain a chemical that, when snorted, eaten or smoked, are used as a legal substitute for ecstasy or cocaine, according to a Florida Department of Law Enforcement report.

Recent reports have suggested that these synthetic drugs can cause severe side-effects in some users, including hallucinations, panic attacks, seizures and kidney failure.

http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2011/feb/14/synthetic-drugs-florida-k2-spice-bath-salts-mdpv/



The inescapable conclusion is that the war on drugs is making things worse, not better.