Fake marijuana, real crisis

Artificial cannabinoids are cheap, common, difficult to track and highly toxic substances 

by Dina Payne

When smoking the powerful street drugs collectively known as "synthetic hashish", they create a "hey" feeling

Synthetic hashish first entered the American market in the early 2000s, but attracted the attention of health authorities in recent years, after a sharp increase in hospitalizations and violent incidents caused by its use. Although these drugs act on the same brain pathways that are also affected by the active substances in hashish, they may cause more extreme effects, including heart attacks, strokes, kidney damage and hallucinations. Between June and early August 2015, the use of these drugs resulted in approximately 2,300 calls to emergency rooms in New York State alone. In 2015, US poison control centers registered more than 6,000 cases of poisoning related to the "spice", almost double the number of referrals in 2013.

The constantly changing recipes allow the drug dealers to evade the authorities. Whenever the use of one of the ingredients is prohibited, it is replaced by another compound. The drugs are then sold online or at gas stations and "explosions" at prices lower than those of real marijuana. The varying compositions also challenge the researchers trying to match the different chemicals and the side effects they cause, or to develop blood tests for identification in those who use them. "These drugs stay in the blood for a very short time, so they are difficult to detect," says Marilyn Hustis, head of the Department of Drug Chemistry and Metabolism at the US National Institute on Drug Abuse. Hostis is now working on identifying the by-products of the artificial cannabinoids using a method that captures all the ions present in a particular sample. Characterization of one substance may take a month, so "I think this method is our only hope" to withstand the flood of imitations, she says.

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by Dina Payne