Here’s a P.S. to last week’s Leadership blog (“Good News, Bad News”) about the increased use of marijuana by high school students. The jump in use is even greater for synthetic marijuana. These mixtures of herbs and chemicals widely known as “spice” or “K2” were sold legally until recently, often as “herbal incense,” in convenience stores and gas stations and on various websites.
Synthetics have been popular with high school students because of their reputation for delivering a powerful high that is legal, easy to get, hard to detect, and without the dangers of other drugs. But calls to hot lines, emergency departments and poison control centers (where calls have almost doubled since last year) indicate the contrary.
“These drugs are just as dangerous as drugs obtained illegally on the street,” says Dr. John Cole, medical director of the Minnesota Poison Control Center. Cole says in many cases synthetics are more dangerous than even methamphetamines and cocaine. “They cause cardiac problems, seizures, kidney failure and can even cause muscle breakdown,” said Cole. “They’re very dangerous compounds.”
Last March, the Drug Enforcement Administration declared several chemicals in synthetic marijuana Schedule I drugs, banning them for a year. Synthetics are now banned in at least 40 states and Congress is considering legislation that would ban them permanently. If they’re not on parents’ radar screens, they should be.
