K2: A Synthetic Compound Threatening Our Teens

Paul Smith, a 19–year-old student from Greenwich, Connecticut, came downstairs on Christmas morning to open presents with his family. Right away, his mother sensed that something was wrong with her son, and steered Paul into the kitchen. Paul’s speech was slurred, and he seemed very disoriented. In a state of panic, his mother offered him a glass of water and hoped that it would snap her son back into reality. As she passed him the cup and noticed he could not grip it, however, she knew something was wrong.
“What did you take? Weed, coke, heroin?” she demanded, knowing her son’s history and recent probation sentence since he was caught with possession of Marijuana. As Paul became more disoriented, not even recognizing his own laptop, his mother insisted he give her whatever drug he was on.
“My mother tried to help my drink a class of water and it spilled out of my mouth, like I was paralyzed,” Paul recalls, “My family was terrified, but I was too wrapped up in the drug and my mind to really be scared.”
However, Paul had not taken any hard drugs, or even an illegal drug. Instead of Marijuana, Paul had started using a new synthetic form of cannabis known as Spice, or K2. A psychoactive herbal and chemical product, Spice is a designer drug created to affect the body in a similar way to cannabinoids – the natural chemical found in cannabis, such as THC. Large and complex combinations of these cannabinoids are used in an attempt to avoid laws, which make cannabis illegal. Sold under various brand names, Spice can be found online, in head shops, and in the occasional gas station. With multiple outlets for purchasing this fake form of Marijuana, how are people supposed to learn of its dangers?
“It’s like playing Russian Roulette,” said John W. Huffman a Professor of organic chemistry and the first to synthesize many of the cannabinoids used in synthetic cannabis. “You really don’t know what it’s going to do to you.”
Huffman created the K2 compound in the mid-1990s while studying cannabinoid receptors. Unsure of how his research spread, Huffman recalls learning that in China and Korea people were selling the compound as a plant growth stimulant. Later Huffman’s book was published and had a chapter on the JWH-018 compound he had created.
However, the story of where it was first smoked and used as a recreational drug began in Europe, or so Huffman believes.
“Somebody picked it up, I think in Europe, on the idea of doping this incense mixture with the compound and smoking it. You can get very high on it. It’s about 10 times more active than THC,” Huffman explained.
This compound works in the same way THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, effects the brain. Both compounds attach themselves to the CB1 receptors in the brain, which primarily affect the central nervous system. JWH-018 also binds itself to the peripheral brain receptors, affecting the immune system as well, Huffman said.
Since people started using Spice, or K2, as a recreational drug, there have been many cases of disorientation, hallucinations, vomiting and agitation among users. However, because users expect the same effects as Marijuana, (i.e. sleepiness, reduced blood pressure, hunger, and at high doses, delusions) they are unaware of the danger they are putting their body in.
In a study done shown on Fox News, patients between the ages of 14 and 21 had the opposite effects. Suffering with symptoms such as hallucinations, agitation, and elevated heart rates and blood pressure, symptoms that do not match up with Marijuana affects.
Dr. Anthony Scalzo, a professor of toxicology at Saint Louis University who ran the study, reported seeing 30 cases of teenagers experiencing these effects after smoking the synthetic cannabis. “K2 may be a mixture of herbal and spice plant products, but it is sprayed with a potent psychotropic drug and likely contaminated with an unknown toxic substance that is causing many adverse effects,” Scalzo explains.
States are beginning to crack down on this substance however, and on April 22 the Department of State Health and Substances outlawed all Marijuana-like substances in the state of Texas. Though Kansas was the first state to ban the drug, in March 2010, Texas has some of the strictest rules in enforcing it. Placed in Schedule 1 of the Texas Schedules of Controlled Substances, K2 has been put in the most restrictive category, making it illegal to distribute, manufacture, possess or sell the synthetic compound. The penalties for any one of these crimes are a class A or B misdemeanor and, according the CBS news, 11 other states are in the process of banning the substance as well.
In an effort to spread knowledge about the harmful effects of K2, a family from Iowa shared their story with anyone willing to listen. At www.k2drugfacts.com, the family wrote about their son, David, a recent high school graduate. A few nights after David graduated, however, him and his friends smoked K2 to celebrate starting the next chapter in their lives. After smoking with his friends, David committed suicide an hour and a half later. Although his parents did not know about his smoking habits at the time, they found out he had smoked the substance 2 days after his death and believe they understand what drove a happy child to such a horrible fate. “David was mentally and physically attacked by the K2, causing hallucinations, unimaginable anxiety, and loss of his ability to reason,” his family writes, “If he and his friends had known then what we know now, they never would have smoked the stuff. We are firmly convinced that David would still be alive today had he not smoked K2.”
David parents continue to warn the readers of their story to talk to their families about the effects of K2. “We had all the conversations families are supposed to have… sex, drugs, drinking, texting while drive, you name it. But we didn’t talk about what we didn’t know. It is so important that parents talk to their kids about the danger of ingesting anything that isn’t fully know and regulated… legal or not.”