POTLIKE PRODUCTS GET STATE'S ATTENTION

Police say two Blacksburg men went to a hospital after they smoked an
herbal mix.

It goes by many names: K2, Cloud 9, Spice, Magic Gold, Buzz, Smoke,
Skunk.

The melange of herbs sprayed with a synthetic marijuana substitute is
blooming in popularity, and making users sick and being outlawed as it
does.

The stuff, still legal in Virginia, announced its presence in the
region Thursday night with an ambulance call to a Blacksburg home,
where two 19-year-old men smoking "Bayou Blaster" were taken to the
hospital with vomiting, accelerated heartbeats, and in the case of one
man, violent seizures, police said.

It's the latest in the cycle of designer drugs to hit the market, only
to be banned as the law catches up to them.

"Anytime these people put these unregulated and uncontrolled drugs
into their bodies, they're truly playing Russian roulette with their
bodies," said Tim Harden, resident agent in charge at the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration in Roanoke.

Poison control centers in 46 states and Washington, D.C., have tallied
761 cases involving the "herbal incense" as of Friday, according to
the American Association of Poison Control Centers. Most have come
from Georgia, Indiana, Missouri and Texas, with a "handful" from
Virginia, said the organization's spokeswoman, Jessica Wehrman.

Calls in Western Virginia have been mainly for information, not
emergencies, and have come from rural areas as much as cities, said
Chris Holstege, medical director of Blue Ridge Poison Center at the
University of Virginia Health System.

Rutherfoord Rose, director of the Virginia Poison Center in Richmond,
said his office has seen about a dozen calls related to the products
in eastern Virginia, all cases treated in emergency rooms between
Richmond and the Tidewater area.

Roanoke and Roanoke County police are aware of the products, commonly
referred to by the popular brand names of K2 or Spice, but reported no
problems.

The DEA treats the products as a "drug of concern," Harden said.
Agents are actively gathering information to see if they need to be
added to the government's schedule of controlled substances.

It's essentially vegetable material labeled as "herbal" that's sprayed
with a laboratory copy of marijuana's active ingredient, Unlike
marijuana's THC, the fake drug causes greater agitation and anxiety,
an accelerated heart rate and sometimes seizures, Harden said.

"We do know it's being sold here, and I'm not going to tell you
where," Harden said. "I do know you can buy it here in Roanoke."

Smoking Joe, on Electric Road, sells 3-gram packets of K2 for $34.99.
The packets are displayed in a case next to handblown glass pipes, and
are sold as incense.

A sticker on the packaging says, "NOT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION," and that
"K2 is a novelty herbal incense which includes natural and synthetic
ingredients."

Sam Alotibi, a clerk at Queen Tobacco on Brambleton Road, said
would-be customers ask for K2 at least twice a week. The store doesn't
sell the stuff, he said. Those seeking it are mostly men in their
early 20s, Alotibi said. That fits the profile of K2 users, Harden
said.

"It's young folks who would normally not go out and buy marijuana
because of the legal issues," he said. "They see this stuff on the
rack at a head shop or a convenience store, and it's out in the open
and for them, it must be OK."

Terms like "herbal" and "incense" on the label make it seem more
benign, Harden said.

K2 and other brands are also widely available on the Internet. One
site, K2incenseblend.com, contained conditions of use that ask buyers
to agree to take responsibility for any personal injury and other damages.

"I also state that I am not a law enforcement officer or a government
employee. I further state that I am not associated with nor affiliated
with any government agency nor am I ordering product under the
instruction of any government agent or agency," the conditions say.

The website says the company says it won't ship to states where the
products have been banned.

Kansas was the first. Kentucky, Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia have
followed. In all, 10 states have banned the products. The Iowa Board
of Pharmacy approved a ban Tuesday. That followed the June suicide of
an 18-year-old boy who smoked K2, suffered a severe panic attack, told
friends he was "going to hell," then went home and shot himself,
according to the Des Moines Register.

What's going on with K2 and similar products, Harden said, is part of
a long-running cycle of homegrown or laboratory-created drugs coming
to prominence as a legal alternative. They're eventually outlawed.
Then another substance comes along and the cycle begins again.

Methamphetamine, the stimulant produced in basement labs now, began
the same way in the early 1980s, Harden said.

More recently, it was the hallucinogenic herb salvia divinorum, which
the Virginia General Assembly outlawed in 2008.

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's office is having "initial
conversations with interested parties about this very issue and
looking into what should be done, including possible legislation,"
said spokesman Brian Gottstein. "We still have more research to do and
more people to include in the discussion before we can talk about what
we think should be done."

Rose, of the Virginia Poison Control Center in Richmond, has a meeting
next week with Del. John O'Bannon, R-Henrico County, who sponsored the
bill that banned salvia divinorum.

The meeting is about other matters, Rose said, but after fresh
publicity about K2, "this will be on the agenda, too."

Staff writer Amanda Codispoti contributed to this report.