Posted on 11/03/2014 4:12:12 PM PST by DBCJR
One of the chemists who designed synthetic cannabis for research purposes, John W. Huffman, PhD once said that he couldn’t imagine why anyone would try it recreationally. Because of its deadly toxicity, he said that those who tried it must be “idiots.” Taxpayer money created synthetic cannabis through this research.
Synthetic pot also goes by Spice, K-2, fake weed, Yucatan Fire, Bliss, Blaze, Skunk, Moon Rocks, etc. Synthetic cannabis, unlike pot, however, can cause a huge variety of symptoms, which can be severe: Agitation, vomiting, hallucination, paranoia, tremor, seizure, tachycardia, hypokalemia, chest pain, cardiac problems, stroke, kidney damage, acute psychosis, brain damage, and death.
Like the active ingredient in pot, THC, synthetic cannabis binds the CB1 receptor. But when it binds, it acts as a full agonist, rather than a partial agonist, meaning that it can activate a CB1 receptor on a brain cell with maximum efficacy, rather than only partially, as with THC.
Another issue with synthetic is its potency, which huge. “Its potency can be up to one hundred or more times greater than THC – that’s how much drug it takes to produce an effect,” says Paul Prather, PhD, professor of pharmacology and toxicology at the at University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.
A central reason that synthetic cannabis can produce such an enormous variety of side effects is likely because CB1 receptors are present in just about every brain region there is. When you have a strong-binding and long-lasting compound going to lots of different areas of the brain, you’re going to get some very bad effects.
Yasmin Hurd, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry, Pharmacology and Systems Therapeutics, and Neuroscience at Mount Sinai Medical Center, says that the wide distribution of CB1 receptors in the brain is exactly why they’re so toxic. “Where they’re located is important – their presence in the hippocampus would be behind their memory effects; their presence in seizure initiation areas in the temporal cortex is why they lead to seizures.
And in the prefrontal cortex, this is probably why you see stronger psychosis with synthetic cannabinoids.” The cardiac, respiratory, and gastrointestinal effects probably come from the CB1 receptors in the brain stem. It might be any one of these that produces the greatest risk of death.
The demonstrative evidence that synthetic cannabis is a different from marijuana all together is that overdose with the drug looks totally different from an “overdose” with natural marijuana. “Clinically, they just don’t look like people who smoke marijuana,” says Lewis Nelson, MD, at NYU’s Department of Emergency Medicine, Division of Medical Toxicology. “Pot users are usually interactive, mellow, funny. Everyone once in a while we see a bad trip with natural marijuana. But it goes away quickly. With people using synthetic, they look like people who are using amphetamines: they’re angry, sweaty, agitated.”
Whatever’s happening, he says, it may be more than just the replacement of THC with JWH. “It’s almost hard to imagine that it could be related to the partial vs. full agonist aspect of the drug.” Prather goes onto say, “What we’re finding from our research is that some of the metabolites of synthetic cannabis bind to the receptor just as well as the drug itself – this isn’t the case with THC. The synthetic metabolites seem to retain full activity relative to the parent compound. So the ability of our bodies to deactivate them may be decreased.” He also points out that what’s lacking in synthetic cannabis is cannabidiol, which is present in natural marijuana and appears to blunt some of the adverse actions of the THC.
Synthetic cannabis is made in underground labs, often in China, and probably elsewhere. The only consistent thing is that there’s no quality control in the formulation process. “Someone’s just kind of riffing off JWH,” says Lapoint. There are hundreds of different forms of JWH, and of other synthetic cannabinoids designed by different labs, and the next one is always waiting to go. “It only takes a grad school chemist level to pull it off,” he says.
That’s a nice synopsis. Thanks again.
“and praying that some dumb kid doesn’t kill himself.’
Or at least that the death does not get traced back to them. Pretty irresponsible.
Similar to the cats who sell something like 2C-T-7 in a little bag and expect their customers to be able to eyeball 5 milligrams without a scale.
>>I’m not a pot smoker but just out of curiosity: how easy is it to distinguish the real from the synthetic. I don’t want kids smoking any of it but I hope they can steer clear of the obvious danger here.
Well, it’s not easy because you can order and smoke the pure powder, or put in on your tongue and trip on it too. The synthetic weed doesn’t have the pungent, weed-like smell, but to be honest it’s so easy for kids to get weed nowadays that the synthetic weed scene is reserved for the hardcore smokers that want to push the boundaries. The stuff is just that strong.
Welcome, proud to be of service.
So anyone selling synthetic brags that it’s synthetic?
It still doesn’t fix the article though.
>>So anyone selling synthetic brags that it’s synthetic?
Well, the “gas station Spice” packs are slowly being taken off the market. It’s very rare that you see them anywhere anymore; in the late 2000’s/early 2010’s you could find them pretty readily. You see the chemicals here and there for sale as a powder on the internet, and that’s really what kills people. As the government bans more and more basic cannabinoid synthetics, they get more and more wild and damaging.
So there’s CB1 receptors all over the place and because this chemical is so efficient, it wreaks havoc. Ah, so THC goes after the CB1 receptors that are all over the place too? but it is ok because it is less efficient?
Can't be true - FR's Drug Warriors tell me pot fuels jihad.
LOL
While I stopped smoking pot over a decade ago ( I was a small scale grower, smoked up to a quarter a day, and my short term memory is only now coming back strong) the only jihad it caused in me was violent munchies.
And I had my grand epiphany about conservatism while tripping on mushrooms.
YMMV, I live a clean life now, and fortunately never had any legal woes during my old one.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.