SYNTHETIC POT 'LIKE PLAYING RUSSIAN ROULETTE': INVENTOR

The high from synthetic marijuana products comes from a laboratory --
not a plant.

And the chemist who created some of the compounds commonly used to
make synthetic marijuana is warning people against using it
recreationally. "It's like playing Russian roulette. You don't know
what it's going to do to you," John W. Huffman told the website LiveScience.

In what's considered the first case of its kind in Calgary, police
this week seized synthetic marijuana on sale at several stores and
stored in a warehouse.

Many of the chemicals in the synthetic drug are banned under the
Controlled Drug and Substances Act. Unlike marijuana, which derives
its potency from a naturally occurring substance in cannabis plants,
the synthetic drug is a chemical-herbal mix of otherwise legal plant
materials, infused with manufactured chemical compounds that mimic
marijuana's active ingredient.

Huffman, a researcher at Clemson University in South Carolina,
synthesized the compounds to explore potential for use in new
pharmaceutical drugs, and to study how the brain responds to
marijuana's main active ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).