SCARY SPICE? INCENSE SOLD FOR MARIJUANA-LIKE HIGHS STOKES FEARS IN
MANY STATES, BUT OREGON HAS SEEN FEW PROBLEMS SO FAR

The great national drug panic du jour is a stinky stepsister to
marijuana that, depending on who you ask, is a second-rate incense or
a threat so dangerous lawmakers must ban it.

At least six states in the South and Midwest have banned the sale of
brands of heady that claim to deliver marijuana-like highs. These
products, sold under names including Spice, K2 and Yucatan Fire
incense, claim to be undetectable by most drug tests and legal to buy
- -- though their legality is a tricky question. Smoking the incense has
sent dozens of people to the hospital nationwide. The Oregon Poison
Center has logged 20 calls about the weed wannabe since January.

But hard data is scarce on just who uses the drugs or how popular they
are. Outside of the score of toxicology cases, the substance has made
barely a blip on the radar in Oregon.

"We have not had any reports of it on our lines yet," says Tom Parker,
spokesman for the Oregon Partnership, which runs substance abuse hotlines.

The few calls may show that Oregon has little need for imitations.
Pacific coast pot is potent and plentiful -- Oregon, California and
Washington are generally ranked among the Top 10 marijuana growing
states. And the tweed is cheaper: Spice, for instance, sells for
around $35 for a 3-gram pouch.

Or the lack of calls could reflect generally tame experiences with the
product. It's possible that the packets contain mostly benign herbs
with no effect. Or they could have effects much like marijuana, which
causes relatively few emergency medical calls.

Tests have turned up marijuana-like chemicals in some samples of the
incense. The Drug Enforcement Agency last year tested samples of
Spice, Genie and Yucatan Fire shipped through a DHL center in Ohio and
found -- in addition to lots of Vitamin E -- "very small but
verifiable amounts" of the psychoactive chemical HU-210. The DEA
scientists declared the products "stealth marijuana."

Dr. Rob Hendrickson, associate medical director of the Oregon Poison
Center, says HU-210 is a synthetic "cannabinoid," a chemical that
affects the same molecules in the brain as THC, one of marijuana's
main psychoactive components. The chemical mostly is used by lab
scientists to study how these parts of the brain work, he says.

"Basically, somebody took these chemicals from a lab and sprayed in on
potpourri," says Hendrickson, a toxicologist at Oregon Health &
Science University.

Tests of the incense have also found "a whole bunch of other things,"
he says. Since the product is sold as incense, it's not regulated like
a food or drug, so "there's nothing to stop a manufacturer from
putting anything they want in there."

That uncertainty is what worries many people.

"The labels don't say what it has in it," Hendrickson says. "And we
have no idea how it's going to affect the individual."

Without a standard composition, it's hard to say how the drug would
affect someone. But most patients who have showed up in Oregon
emergency rooms seem to have symptoms similar to taking too many
stimulants, including high blood pressure and tremors. "There's even
been a couple of seizures reported," Hendrickson says.

Doctors generally find out about the fake marijuana when the patients
admit to having used it, he says. Health workers usually sedate the
patient for a couple of hours while the drug works through the system.
So far, Hendrickson says, he hasn't seen any long-term problems.

What legal problems Spice smokers might suffer is unclear. It's legal
buy incense or products made of legal herbs that claim to have
marijuana-like effects, such as Siberian motherwort. But THC and
related chemicals, including HU-210, are schedule I controlled
substances in the United States alongside heroin, ecstasy and LSD.

Several European and Asian nations have passed laws against the drug
or its main marijuana-like chemical components. And several more U.S.
states are considering a ban. Spokespeople for Oregon's departments of
justice and human services say they are not focusing on the incense
now.