LEGAL WEED?

It's Like Pot, But It's Not. Is Spice All It's Cracked Up To
Be?

AUGUSTA, GA - Around Augusta and throughout much of the nation,
little bags of herbs are causing a stir.

It's commonly referred to as K-2, but that is only one of the brand
names the substance goes by.

More generically, it's called "spice" or "herbal incense" and is a
collection of herbs that have been treated with synthetic cannabinoids
to mimic the active ingredient in marijuana -- tetrahydrocannabinol, or
THC.

"We've got a lot of people in here asking about it, saying they want
to try it," says Memory Quick of Tie Dye Rosie, an incense, smoke and
clothing shop on Old Evans Road.

Quick says she does not recommend that people smoke the herbal
incenses the store carries that go by names such as Serenity,
Incognito, Sunset Gold and Genesis. In fact, the packets are imprinted
with, "Not for human consumption."

Tie Dye Rosie also asks for people's IDs when they purchase the
product, Quick says.

Quick acknowledges trying spice herself, though says it's not her cup
of tea.

"When I tried it, it just kind of gave me a relaxed feeling," Quick
says. "It does kind of the same thing [as marijuana]. It's not for
me."

Modern Age Tobacco on Peach Orchard Road also carries herbal incense
in varieties like Dragon Spice, Mystery Triad and Jolly Jam, a store
employee confirmed.

Typically, spice is sold in smoke shops, but Quick says she has even
seen the packets of herbs being sold in local gas stations and salons.

Spice reviews, which give toke-by-toke reports on the effects of
particular brands, are also cropping up on YouTube.

"Definitely a pretty good head high," says a guy on YouTube who looks
like he's in his early 20s, after taking a couple of on-camera hits of
Ultimate Dragon Spice. "I'm pretty relaxed, too. Today's Saturday,
too, so I don't know... There's nothing really good on TV... I give this a
five out of five."

Not only has spice gotten the attention of consumers seeking a buzz,
it has also sparked mounting legislation aimed at banning it.

Several countries, including Germany and Switzerland, have already
banned spice.

In March, the governor of Kansas signed into law a bill banning
products containing synthetic cannabinoids, making it the first state
in the U.S. to make spice illegal.

Prior to passage of the legislation, authorities raided the business
of 29-year-old Jonathan Sloan, who was allegedly manufacturing and
distributing K-2, according to the Associated Press.

Authorities had seized more than $700,000 in Sloan's personal and
business bank accounts and he was facing eight felony drug counts.

However, on April 7 all of the charges were dropped by the local
district attorney's office, according to the Lawrence (Kan.) Journal
World.

The district attorney's office told the newspaper that the case was
still being reviewed and charges could be refiled if the investigation
warranted it.

Meanwhile, Sloan's business, Bouncing Bear Botanicals, is up and
running again. However, a search of the business' Web site for K-2 or
herbal incense produced no results.

The Georgia Senate unanimously voted to ban spice products last month
and the bill, S.B. 498, is now in the House.

Legislators were reacting, in part, to a March incident involving
several teens who were admitted to an Atlanta hospital after having an
adverse reaction to spice.

Other states are also taking a harder look at this synthetic
pot.

But local law enforcement has seen little in the way of a problem with
the substance.

"Nobody's called me yet," said Lt. Robert Partain of the Richmond
County Sheriff's narcotics division. "We just haven't encountered it."

Partain says spice is currently legal in Augusta, as long as it
doesn't contain the synthetic cannabinoid HU-210, which is a Schedule
I controlled substance.

Making that determination, however, can be tricky, Partain
says.

In order to confirm the presence of HU-210, the product must be sent
to a national Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) lab.

"There is no field test for HU-210," Partain says.

It's been widely reported that spice products also don't show up in
drug tests like marijuana does.

Although lawmakers are on alert, Mike Marbert, special agent with the
local division of the DEA, says his agency has been more focused on
hard, illicit drugs than spice.

"We haven't seen any local enforcement of that. It's something we
haven't seen a lot of," Marbert says. "We're really focusing on the
crack and the meth and the heroin. A lot of these things are best left
at the local level and, right now, that's where we're at. At this
point it hasn't risen to a level that it needs federal attention."

I'm stoned.

It's a full-on, marijuana high, but I haven't smoked any pot, nor have
I broken any law.

About a half hour ago on this Saturday night, I filled a tobacco pipe
with several pinches of Happy Shaman Herbs.

I purchased the shiny, semi-transparent baggie containing one gram of
the "herbal incense" from a local store for $22.50.

The store where I purchased it did not want to be mentioned in this
story.

I'm a bit apprehensive as I sit down on the back porch to try my
sample of spice.

I've read the news reports and anecdotal accounts on sites like WebMD
of people experiencing racing heartbeats, panic attacks and the like
after smoking spice. And then there was the instance of those
hospitalized teens in Atlanta.

But the testimony, if not exuberance, of a person in the store where I
purchased the spice leads me to think I'll be OK.

I dump out some of the product on a plain piece of white paper to
examine it.

It looks like flecks of lavender and bits of ground sage with some
other types of small leaves mixed in. It's supposed to be pina colada
flavored, but smells more like potpourri and lavender.

At about 8:30 p.m., I take my first puff and hold it in. The smoke is
not overly harsh, but I do cough a little trying to keep it in my lungs.

I exhale and start searching for a different feeling, but nothing
yet.

However, after the fifth or sixth puff, that stoned feeling sets in. I
walk inside and nod to my wife. "Yeah, it's like marijuana," I tell
her.

A former pot smoker, I abandoned the stuff long ago because of how it
started making me feel. Walking around with a borderline anxiety
attack, like the world was going to end, was not my idea of a good
time.

The spice buzz is very mellow and I feel extremely relaxed. I sit on
the couch with my wife and occasionally update her on how I'm feeling.

I'm watching "Four Christmases" with Vince Vaughn and I'm not even
complaining. I'm not really paying all that much attention, either.
I'm just very relaxed and contemplative -- but in a good way.

There is a bit of guilt, or the feeling I'm doing something
unlawful.

But again, this a product I bought from the store counter, just as if
I had bought a six-pack of beer or bottle of whiskey.

After an hour, I'm still buzzed, but a little less so. By 10:30 p.m.,
I'm more sleepy than anything else.

The experience has me conflicted.

I could best describe it as pleasant, but not something I'd want to do
every day. I wouldn't want to drive on it, but I was still able to
carry on thoughtful conversation and function fine.

But the conflicted part comes when I ponder what exactly it was that I
just put in my body. It wasn't marijuana. Rather, it was some type of
synthetically created version of marijuana made God knows where.

What is it doing inside my body at this moment? Will the chemical
compounds I inhaled harm me in some way?

John W. Huffman, Ph.D., says there is no way to know.

Huffman's opinion counts. His initials are the namesake for JWH-018, a
synthetic cannabinoid that has turned up in some samples of spice.

A research professor in organic chemistry at Clemson University in
South Carolina, Huffman told the Metro Spirit by e-mail that JWH-018
was first synthesized by an undergraduate student working in his lab
during the summer of 1995.

The researchers had been developing synthetic cannabinoids for
possible medicinal uses for such afflictions as glaucoma, nausea and
appetite loss.

JWH-018 has been largely untested in humans, making its use a roll of
the dice, Huffman says.

"There are no valid, peer-reviewed studies of the effects of this
compound in humans, nor are there any data regarding its toxicity,"
Huffman says. "I emphasize that this compound was not designed to be a
super-THC. It is simply one of many compounds synthesized by my group
and others for the purpose of investigating the relationship between
chemical structure and biological activity.

"It should absolutely not be used as a recreational
drug."

Andrea Hohmann, professor of psychology and neuroscience at the
University of Georgia, has studied the relationship between
cannabinoids and their receptors in the body.

She says the one thing that is known about JWH-018 is that it is
better at binding to the body's cannabinoid receptors than regular THC
found in marijuana.

"That means it will stay associated with the receptor longer," Hohmann
says. "It is important to emphasize that marijuana has a very low
toxicity because there are very few cannabinoid receptors in brain
stem regions that control heart rate and respiration. And that
basically explains why high doses of marijuana don't kill you. The
active ingredient in spice, I think the toxicity isn't known.

"You can't associate that the plant and this compound will have
exactly the same effect." Hohmann says there is also no way to know
from batch to batch whether the synthetic cannabinoids have been
formulated properly and applied to the herb blends in proper doses.

She brings up the case of drug users in the 1980s who injected China
White, a synthetic, heroin-like drug. The maker of the drug had meant
to create the chemical compound MPPP, a cousin of the drug Demerol.
Instead, the maker created MPTP, which caused users to develop
Parkinson's disease.

"And who would know what type of dosing is used [in making spice]?"
Hohmann says.

One Web site purports to show how to make one's own
spice.

The recipe involves a bonsai tree fertilizer that can be purchased
through a seller on, of all places, amazon.com.

Acetone is also a component in the recipe and the Web site warns that
dangerous "hot spots" can develop in the herbal spice mixture if the
sprayed-on chemicals are not applied in an even fashion.

Some have theorized that such a hot spot may have been responsible for
the teens who were hospitalized in Atlanta.

Other reports suggest that there may be a more addictive quality to
spice versus regular marijuana.

An account published on WebMD tells of a 20-year-old German man who
had been using the product Spice Gold daily for eight months.

The man reportedly needed to use more and more of the product to
achieve the same high and had worked his way up to a habit of 3 grams
a day -- 10 times the amount he had initially been using.

When the man stopped using the product, he experienced classic
withdrawal symptoms like sweating, nausea and headaches, according to
the WebMD article.

Allen St. Pierre is director of the National Organization for Reform
of Marijuana Laws, or NORML, a group that advocates the legalization
of marijuana.

He says he isn't surprised that people are willing to a take a gamble
to achieve the effects of marijuana, given the drug's popularity. He
cites data like those maintained by the National Institute on Drug
Abuse that say roughly 14 million Americans regularly use marijuana
and close to 100 million have tried the drug at least once.

Fourteen states and various municipalities have decriminalized
marijuana.

Not surprisingly, St. Pierre sees spice as one more argument in favor
of making marijuana legal for adults to use.

"With the prohibition in place it makes the desirability to create
analogs -- to make products that are like marijuana, but not -- that
much greater," St. Pierre says. "If we don't have policies for
marijuana like alcohol policies -- acknowledging use is proper, misuse
is not -- then we're simply not going to have a degree of control and
science necessary to discern the positive or negative effects of this
particular new drug or the whole classes of analogs that could be made
from any rogue chemist at any time."

And while there may be no studies available on the effects of certain
synthetic cannabinoids, St. Pierre says there are more than 17,000
studies on the effects of marijuana and THC that users can draw on in
making their decisions about whether to use the drug. "It's [legalized
marijuana] got so many other checks and balances than does
prohibition," St. Pierre says.

Still, a recent Associated Press/CNBC poll shows that much of the
nation is not convinced that legalizing marijuana is the right thing
to do.

In the poll, conducted in early April, only 33 percent of respondents
favored legalization, while 55 percent opposed it.

But spice also creates a problem in terms of legal liabilities for
businesses, St. Pierre says. St. Pierre gives the example of a
delivery driver smoking spice on the job. Because spice doesn't show
up in drug tests, the employer could be on the hook for damages caused
by the employee.

"Unlike, say, cannabis, which creates metabolites and can be tested
for, these analogs don't create metabolites that can be tested for,"
St. Pierre says. "So in the world of legal liabilities, something like
this should arrest someone's attention immediately."