Each state is currently using various administration actions, prosecution strategies, and regulations for product labeling and branding to either quickly ban individual substances or criminalize sales.
Recently, states like New York, Virginia and others have pushed for new laws that broaden the chemical definitions meant to be outlined in Schedule I, as well as call for harsher penalties for sale of synthetic cannabinoid products.
Instead of further criminalization, alternative approaches are needed to reduce accidental deaths related to drug use, improve public health outcomes, care for vulnerable populations, and protect young people.
These alternatives include:. In the Army, the use of noncontrolled intoxicants - to include natural substances - is prohibited under Army Regulation Army Substance Abuse Program.
The Army has taken a proactive stance on addressing the dangers of Spice. A violation can lead to disciplinary action, which may range from a reprimand to a dishonorable discharge. A Spice user may have no idea what he or she is being exposed to, due to the high quantity of other synthetic materials contained in the drug.
Even worse are the severe side effects, including anxiety attacks, nausea, hallucinations, paranoia, psychotic episodes, chemical dependency and rapid heart rate. Victims have been known to suffer a severe reaction to the drug, resulting in swelling of the brain.
The growing popularity of the drug is causing increasing alarm among law enforcement officials, military personnel, lawmakers and health care professionals across the U. Within a week or so of her arrival in the Bronx, Beauty found who she hoped would be a boyfriend fitting her ideal. He also provided a guise of protection against ill-intentioned johns when Beauty climbed into unknown cars and spent his days tracking her movements.
At the same time, he introduced her to K2, buying her packs for encouragement and good behavior. Under its influence, she was a bit less wild, less prone to yell obscenities in the street when frustrated, and more controllable. Beauty believes she made a hard-learned, measured decision in her adoption of K2 as drug of choice, one she stands by even still.
No one forced her: she tried it and liked how it made her feel. Friends who use crack and heroin, however, are suspicious of her drug and refuse to partake in it. The contents of K2 baggies, after tearing away the plastic seal, look something akin to marijuana: clumps of earthy green that are laid inside rolling papers to smoke. The resemblance to marijuana stops with the nickname and appearance: though K2 and marijuana both interact with cannabinoid receptors in the central nervous system to produce psychoactive effects, they do so differently, with the lab-bred synthetics binding and activating receptors to potentially detrimental degrees for people who ingest them.
Along with this, synthetics repeatedly change, with batches containing widely differing substances at differing concentrations. To manufacture K2, varying chemical combinations of unknown potency are often purchased from China, imported to the US, then dissolved in acetone to be poured or sprayed over plant material before packaging.
The mixing process is notoriously inconsistent, known to involve implements as varied as industrial cement mixers to bathtubs. Alternatively, the entire mixture may be purchased wholesale from international sellers, both methods potentially cutting six-figure profits for distributors, according to Rusty Payne, public affairs officer for the DEA.
Yet however dangerous the drugs may be, the seemingly rational efforts to control them are actually part of the problem. Packages of K2 exist in a public health grey space, neither controlled nor completely illegal, and outlawing them outright is complex if not impossible with current methods. They have been sharing expert chemistry reports and other evidence with defense teams after achieving success in courtrooms. Felman and other defense attorneys say the DEA also has tried to keep secret an internal dissenting opinion from Arthur Berrier, one of its former experts.
Berrier found that one particular chemical at issue, UR, was not in fact a drug analogue. But the DEA added it to its list of analogue drugs anyway without further discussion, court records say. The chemicals for spice and K2 — with such names as XLR -- are typically purchased online from Chinese labs and sprayed onto dry, leafy plant material. Users smoke it to get high, like marijuana. Dosages vary greatly due to the lack of any production standards.
They are sold in colorful packets with catchy names like Scooby Snax that claim to be herbal incense and potpourri -- not for human consumption. Project Synergy followed, with more than arrests made over three phases of the operation that lasted from to Prior to the government crackdown, most spice products were sold in tobacco shops, gas stations and convenience stores.
Usage of the drugs has since dropped considerably. Retail stores that once grossed millions from spice sales have stopped stocking the products due to the crackdown. The drugs are largely peddled now by street dealers, experts say.
Law enforcement officials have shifted their focus to the influx of new dangerous substances like fentanyl, a synthetic form of heroin. But spice use is still a problem, even though the number of emergency room visits and poison control reports have plummeted since its peak in Not all spice prosecutions ended with acquittals, dropped charges or reduced sentences.
District Judge Jane Boyle this year sentenced Barry Bays to 25 years in prison in Dallas for misbranding and mail fraud even though the government had dropped all of the drug trafficking counts against him.
Circuit Court of Appeals twice reversed his previous convictions. One of those reversals was because the government had failed to show that Bays knew the drugs he sold were illegal.
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