How the War on Drugs Caused the Fake Pot Problem

Spice "herbal incense": Not for human consumption (wink wink)<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Spice_drug.jpg">Schorle</a>/Wikimedia Commons

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Yesterday, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration published a “first-of-its-kind report” finding that synthetic marijuana, commonly sold as “herbal incense” with names like K2 and Spice, was linked to more than 11,400 drug-related hospitalizations in 2010. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who’d spearheaded a recent bill banning chemicals used to make fake pot, quickly responded to the news with a statement: “This report underscores that a federal ban was right to protect public safety…Still, cynical manufacturers are evading the federal ban by altering chemicals or ignoring the ban altogether. Anyone who might be tempted to try this drug should realize its use can end in tragedy, such as the loss of my constituent, David Rozga.”

Rozga was an 18-year-old Iowan who may have had a history of depression and committed suicide in June 2010 after smoking K2 with his friends. Soon, reports of the dangers of synthetic pot, ranging from nausea to hallucinations and seizures, were all over the local and national news. Later that year, the Drug Enforcement Agency invoked emergency powers to temporarily ban the drug as lawmakers scrambled to outlaw it for good.

“This report confirms that synthetic drugs cause substantial damage to public health and safety in America,” drug czar Gil Kerlikowske, a former Seattle police chief who came into the Obama administration as a reformer, said in a statement about the SAMHSA report. “Make no mistake—the use of synthetic cannabinoids can cause serious, lasting damage, particularly in young people.”

The irony in all this, of course, is that synthetic marijuana only exists because of the federal prohibition on the real stuff. While smoking pot isn’t as benign as many advocates claim, particularly when used by teens, it’s still one of the safest recreational drugs. Synthetic pot, on the other hand, was largely unregulated in 2010 (as its still-legal derivatives still are), and because it only contains synthetic cannabinoids and not THC—the primary part of the cannabis plant that gets you high—it’s good for passing drug tests but provides a worse high with an elevated risk of adverse effects. (The SAMHSA report says there were more than 461,000 emergency room visits in 2010 involving real marijuana. But this is a misleading statistic since it counts a patient’s mention of marijuana use regardless of whether it was a factor in the hospitalization.)

Not that the prohibitionists would ever tout the relative safety of pot over its synthetic counterparts. In 2007, responding to constituents’ letters asking that he support the legalization of marijuana, Sen. Grassley likened pot to rape, genocide, and counterfeit money:

After several thousand years, civilized societies have failed to eliminate murder, rape, or child abuse. Nor have they eliminated organized crime, the manufacture of counterfeit money, or genocide. But no one seriously sees these failures as justification for surrender. Illegal drug use costs society at least as much as any of these social ills. Yet we do not hear any calls to legalize these abuses. Why then should we give up? Should we surrender to the criminals, and legalize marijuana? No. Instead, we should do whatever we can to prevent criminals from gaining the upper hand, do what needs to be done to give our families, our friends, and our neighbors a safe and secure place to live.

Meanwhile, in the past month, recreational marijuana use has been legalized in Colorado and Washington. Medical marijuana is legal in 18 states and Washington, D.C., and 58 percent of voters now support legalization.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate