Had plain old cannabis been legalized 20 years ago, I doubt that these synthetic cannabinoids would have become notable articles of commerce. Maybe a handful of adventurous psychonauts would use contract research laboratories to make small quantities and post trip reports. But cannabis wasn't legalized, so hundreds of chemicals with sort-of-similar effects, selected more for "not technically banned yet" than "believed to be safe for human consumption," are being tested on human subjects without safeguards.
I moved from Manchester (in the Article) to Holland a year ago. Maybe my comment might be insightful.
No it's not a problem here... Illegal drugs are still a thing, but anything that was in Manchester an 'ex-legal high' tends to be sold at SmartShops which have a brick-and-mortar presence.
I have never seen anyone who was obviously a spice-head. I've seen some homeless people here (much less than in Manchester), but they actually mainly just chat (in English) to me and ask for help rather than pure begging. Holland actively helps homeless people which is less than I can say for the UK.
I've been asked for help about 4 times in 1 year in the Netherlands.
I got asked once a day in Manchester.
In London, I got asked 4 times a day!
The spice epidemic in Manchester, isn't purely a result of drug law. The current UK government has no compassion for the homeless or unemployed. If you force people into vulnerable situations, then they are going to be taken advantage of.
# Another story about why spice is popular...
About 6 years ago, the place in the article (Piccadilly Gardens), had sellers trading weed. It was terrible stuff, both low quantity, and low value, but it was clearly labeled with a green cannabis leaf. It was relatively harmless. If you asked anyone 'where could i get some', it was the first answer.
About 4 years ago, they increased police presence in Piccadilly Gardens due to complaints about 'the smell'. Local newspapers wrote about it, and the end result were, several of the dealers were arrested. These were dealers that had been operating for years, and were the closest thing to a 'go-to' place there was in the city center.
4 years ago, ex-legal highs were not yet outlawed. It's not hard to imagine what happened with the vacuum.
For me, weed is not longer exciting. It is a take it or leave it thing now, and I am much more concerned with my relationship with alcohol... but yeah... Spice is a problem because weed is a 'class B drug' now.
I currently live in Manchester and your comment is insightful, thanks.
As far as I have read in other articles, spice is also way cheaper than weed, maybe this has been a contributing factor as well. The sight of comatose homeless people in Manchester's city center is part of the scenery and extremely sad.
Also, Piccadilly Gardens is still 'the place' where drugs are sold, at least as far as I know. I got asked more than once if I 'want anything' by shady-looking individuals. The smell is still there, both in Piccadilly and, generally, in Manchester. As a personal anecdote, excluding the areas right next to coffeeshops, you can smell weed more often in Manchester than in Amsterdam.
Maybe that's the entire point, the UK Government's "final solution" to the "homeless problem."
I hope I'm wrong and it's just the free market taking advantage of the weakest. Somehow that's preferable to a concerted effort to get rid of the unfit.
Did you read the article? One of the main problems with spice is that it is being used by people who aren't supposed to be using any drugs (alcohol included) because it doesn't show up on a drug test.
Even if weed were legal it would still be off limits to those on parole and such, so those people would still use spice.
Does that mean Spice, or does that entail breeding higher potency strains with new smells and various levels of CBD or whatever?
As a non-pot user, Spice seems to lack the 'fun' of marijuana- the herbology, aesthetics, and equipment.
Very few people enjoy beer or whisky and decide they will start drinking isopropanol or Everclear to satisfy their interest. They dive deeper, going for IPAs and single malts and tend to be pretty single-minded about their preference.
It's a strange argument, and goes back to the question of how Spice/legalization correlate.
People mostly do research chemicals as a stand-in for their drug of interest. I sincerely doubt legalization would cause "considerably more" than prohibition, and I'd like to see any evidence that it does.
The article undersells how potent "spice" is--up to 50,000 times stronger gram for gram than pure THC.
You're in the LSD world of micrograms having effects, and also the research chemicals world of not knowing what you're getting.
The potency allows easier smuggling, where only a few grams at a time are imported, then diluted/cut on arrival. The ease of smuggling is perhaps the largest economic factor in the drug's rise.
Much like heroin only became popular in the US following the criminalisation of opium.
I suppose there are parallels with the current opioid epidemic these days, in that restriction tends to cause more problems than it solves (at least in this area of policy).
This is an interesting phenomenon. Enforcment of prohibition and regulation of a substance is less effective as value to volume ratio increases, but as 'potency' increases so does public support for regulation/prohibition. In the US, THC is increasingly difficult to prohibit even in states that still try, partly due to the industrialization of creating concentrated forms, and it's relative ease of smuggling vs raw marijuana.
See, weirdly, part of the solution here is to not get all up in people’s business over drugs - if it were less risky to use more traditional drugs, people would do that instead. They use spice because it’s (supposedly) hard to get done for it - working around the system that seeks to prevent them from using their drug of choice.
The other part of the solution is to provide actual help to people, not contingent on things like “priority need” (aka you can’t generally access housing help as a man without children), and before people wind up being forced to disclose a criminal record to any potential employer.
"(aka you can’t generally access housing help as a man without children)"
how painfully true this is, if youre a single middle aged man with no children there is very little help available. but sadly its the "war on drugs" that has created this situation, had they just taken the sensible option and decriminalized cannabis i doubt we would have anywhere near the epidemic that currently plagues us
and if they really are planning on going through with this crazy brexit idea it would at least create an opportunity to create new businesses, jobs and increase tourism. but since when have the government listened to sense? just look at what happened to david nutt
> They use spice because it’s (supposedly) hard to get done for it - working around the system that seeks to prevent them from using their drug of choice.
That's not why people in England use spice. They use spice because they wish to get heavily intoxicated, and spice does that cheaply and easily.
If cannabis was legal, I'm pretty sure the majority would use it instead of spice. Hell, if cannabis had been legal before spice became a thing, I'm sure spice never would have become a thing - indeed, a whole host of synthetic analogues for a variety of drugs would probably never have come into existence.
The article is not talking about the majority, but about the several thousand or so people who are homeless and about 10,000 or so more people who are prisoners.
People who want to use cannabis will use cannabis. It's trivially easy to get hold of, and it's mostly dealt with by warnings or cautions. Approximately no-one is using spice because cannabis is illegal.
Alcohol is legal, but that doesn't stop a few people from drinking litres and litres of shitty white cider or industrial vodka.
You said "That's not why people in England use spice", so I assumed you were generalsing to the whole of England, and not just prisoners and people who are homeless in England. Sorry if I misunderstood.
I agree that for a subset of prisoners and people who are homeless, they are looking for the cheapest possible drug, regardless of negative side effects.
> Approximately no-one is using spice because cannabis is illegal
Not sure if you're still only talking about people who are homeless here? Regardless, spice only even exists because cannabis is illegal.
A small anecdote, but when I was in high school they started drug testing if you participated in or used any non-essential services, like parking or playing on a sports team or joining a club. The effect was that a lot of people that smoked cannabis switched to spice. It was also legal at the time, so it was potentially easier to get.
In my opinion, the policy bit the school in the ass because spice had a considerably stronger and more harmful effect than cannabis.
Same deal when I was in the Army. Soldiers started smoking Spice and K2, which was just some plant substrate laced with a compound cooked up in a Chinaman’s laboratory, always one methyl group ahead of the regulators. Much scarier than any of the combat hazards I was exposed to.
> drugs that hit the same brain receptors as cannabis but are more potent and addictive
Okay, why there are using cannabis as an example and not other substances that react with those receptors, like chocolate?
It is better as they abstained from using the term "synthetic marijuana", but you can still sense an agenda.
Things like this put me off from reading news pieces. If I see so much foul language and twisting things to put a certain angle on the topic - on the topic I am fairly knowledgeable, then how much propaganda is being served in the topic I know little about?
This is a disgrace to journalism. Apologies for my rant.
The Economist has been editorially pro-legalization of cannabis for a long time so any propagandizing agenda you think you're "sensing" just isn't there; in fact their agenda is literally the complete opposite of what you "sensed".
They pretty obviously used "cannabis" here because these products were designed + marketed as legal cannabis replacements or alternatives. They're called "synthetic cannabinoids" for a reason. I hardly think that using "cannabis" as a comparison to "synthetic cannabinoids" is "twisting things", or using "foul language", either.
> Okay, why there are using cannabis as an example and not other substances that react with those receptors, like chocolate?
Because these substances are obviously and explicitly marketed as substitutes for cannabis. Cannabis is the relevant comparison. There's no agenda, just reality. You're being very dramatic calling this a "disgrace" when it's really very mundane.
Based one the effects of the drug described in the article, cannabis hardly sounds like a relevant comparison. Cannabis users don't end up in the hospital with psychosis and run around naked for 3 hours...
Cannabis is a relevant comparison because the only reason people are using this stuff is due to cannabis prohibition. Are you really not getting this part? Cannabis being illegal is a large part of why they are making spice in the first place.
You are correct that the effects are much more dangerous than those of cannabis; that's why so many people in this thread are saying cannabis prohibition as had a negative effect in this particular way.
As someone who has smoked pot in the past and has spent a lot of time around people who have done a ton of different drugs, it would make no sense to me to substitute this drug for pot. The effects are totally different. The reason most people smoke pot is to chill out and relax, not lose their minds. The reason people do other drugs is to feel the effects those drugs give. You don't substitute one thing for another just because the ingredients are similar. You substitute it because it has similar effects.
its actually something of a bit of poor research on behalf of the article combined with a slight naming issue, originally "spice" when sold as a commercial product initially contained 2 synthetic cannabinoids JWH-018 and one other which i cant remember off hand.
later on other brands using different mixes came about one of the biggest being called "Black Mamba" this too was generally a mixture of synthetic cannabinoids sprayed onto smokable herbs, but then came the psychoactives bill which banned most of these chemicals meaning that they started to be produced illicitly and also led to the mixture of chemicals used in them being even further twisted.
this brings us to now and while fringe analogs of synthetic cannabinoids are no doubt still being used and by no means are they likely to be good for you the problem chemical is actually more likely to be MDPV or a derivative of it (methylenedioxypyrovalerelone if memory serves correctly) otherwise known as Monkey dust or simply "Dust" it wouldnt surprise me to see some form of dissociative analog in there too, something like 3MeO-PCP
MDPV is not a cannabinoid but more a stimulant of sorts which gives a very short high with very long acting unpleasant side effects. of course its highly unlikely we will ever know exactly what is in that crap but one thing is for sure you have one and only one thing to blame for the problem and that is the prohibition of other substances proven to be less harmful. were we to make a sensible move the likes of the one Portugal has it would likely alleviate the problem greatly, even simply legalizing the sale and recreational use of cannabis would likely greatly reduce the problem (whilst also creating businesses, jobs, tax revenue and tourism to name but a few economic benefits)
how do i know all this stuff? experience i have no shame in admitting i became interested in psychoactive chemicals at one point in my 20s and spent a few years deeply researching and trying a staggering number of chemicals both the classical psychoactives we all know and a large number of "research chemicals" MDPV was in fact one of said chemicals, i only did it once and i did it via insuffluation it gave me a 15min buzz followed by 3 days of no sleep, twitchyness, paranoia and toward the end a similar situation to amphetamine psychosis including hallucinations, from what im told smoking it only serves to intensify all of this. of all the chemicals i tried there were few i could label as fundamentally "bad" but MDPV was definitely one of those few
i fully agree with you that at this stage any comparison to cannabis is pretty idiotic, not only do we not actually know what is in the stuff but even if it were synthetic cannabinoids and nothing else theyre likely now so far removed from the original substance that they have totally different effects just look at what happens when you modify something like amphetamine, both MDMA and Meth are amphetamine analogs but you dont see many people homeless, toothless and brainless due to an MDMA addiction. a quick read of PIHKAL or TIKHAL will show you just how much the effects of a chemical can change with only a tiny modification
its a shame that people arent more biochemically aware or theyd know that articles like this are packed with poor information but sadly thats not the case so we end up with people demonising other substances based on poor information from supposedly trustworthy sources
It's amazing to me that people insist their personal experience with drugs will apply to the entire population - even to people with genetic disposition to addiction combined with poorly treated mental illness who are living on the streets.
by no means am i saying that everyone will have the same experience as me, in fact im a rather rare example as despite having experimented with some of what are classed as the most addictive substances there are i have developed no addiction, nor was i doing it to escape, hide from something or console myself, i did what i did out of pure curiosity.
however you are right, drugs affect everyone differently but its a pretty established fact that the chemicals contained in these "products" are far from harmless and all evidence points to them being more dangerous from a mental health standpoint than most classic psychoactives
One note about synthetic marijuana, I always thought the existence of it's market demand was primarily due not to prohibition/absence but the asinine legal, financial or social consequences that can come along with failing a drug test for THC... (losing a job, professional license, education funding, etc). Of course, in the US at least, those mostly arose after, as a reaction to prohibition.
TL;DR. I think very few people smoke(d) Spice (TM)? because they simply couldn't access marijuana.
actually here in the UK Spice first came about around 2008, a time in the UK known to those who smoked weed as the "Gritweed Epidemic" in an unscrupulous attempt to make higher profits growers were spraying weed with spray on glass frosting and other nasty substances that looked like crystals but were actually highly unpleasant often harmful substances
This became so bad that at its height it was near impossible to buy unadulterated cannabis, then suddenly a product pops up in head shops that seems to get people stoned, costs pretty much the same as weed and wasnt full of glass/silica/paint, it became an instant success
this of course led people to realise there were other such chemicals capable of getting you high in some way that were also not yet illegal with the likes of 4-methylmethcathinone aka mephedrone becoming hugely popular because it was powerful, easily available and cheap,
the HUGE danger this brought with it was that there was (arguably still is) a belief by those who dont know anything about the chemistry that as its not illegal it must be "safe" this of course was not the case at all
In the US it may have been more for that reason but its actually quite a rare occurence that people are drug tested in the workplace here unless you work a mission critical job like say an air traffic controller, i have never been personally subjected to a drugs test in 2 decades of employment
I was a freshman in college right when spice/JWH was first catching on, and from first hand experience I know at least 5 people who used it semi regularly even though they weren't expecting a drug test. The fact that you could get it cheaply from the headshop accross the street and carry it with you risk free was the main selling point then. Also it didn't smell like weed and you could keep it in the dorm without stinking the place up. Eventually we started learning about the crazy health risks and the law started catching up with banning the most common JWH formulations, and it wasn't worth the risk. Fortunately most folks in my friend group were able to move off campus and make safe connections with weed dealers and either do that, or sober up completely. But it definitely had appeals to people who could not easily get marijuana or didn't like the sketchness of getting it in a prohibition state.
seems the situation was different in the US but much is, you guys had an analogs law long before us and also some states with legal cannabis.
thankfully for the tech savvy not too many years later came the advent of the dark web markets such as silk road which gave people access to clean weed fairly easily. say what you will but i believe the dark net markets are actually a force for good, although there isnt the "community spirit" which existed in the original silk road, there were many good people on there
now im sure there are those reading this thinking "good people?? these are drug dealers! theyre scum!" but that isnt the case, especially in those days, people cared about providing clean quality substances to people who wanted them, no one was "pushing" anything and almost everything was of the finest quality. again its an issue of the image the media has created. its a shame im so terribly poor at writing in general or i could write a fairly interesting book or article about this sort of stuff
Yeah, I just read your comment about people in the UK adulterating marijuana with random junk and it just blows my mind that anyone could do that. I definitely see how that would drive people towards synthetics.
I know what you mean about community though. Where I'm from most of the dealers are the stereotypical goofy hippies who seem to worship cannabis and see it as a cure for anything. It's a little obnoxious to listen to them rant sometimes, but at least I know they genuinely aren't going to poison anybody for a few bucks, they just really like weed.
The original spice chemicals were pretty good. Only serious side effect was extreme tiredness the next day. Besides that they were good and trippy. Then the government banned that chemical so they keep modifying the structure to the point that some of them are really evil. This issue could probably be solved by legalising normal weed.
I think first of all, possession of all drugs should be legalized. Secondly, we need state controlled entities that are allowed to sell drugs. This tackles a number of problems:
Better youth protection: a dealer doesn't care if you are 18 or not
Consumer protection: clean substances without dangerous cutting agents will prevent health issues and accidental overdoses
No more black market: as long as the legal substances aren't too expensive, a legalisation will close the black market for drugs since it is no longer economic to sell them illegally. (This might also take a huge hit on the finances of organised crime and terrorist organisations)
More money for helping addicts and _neutral_ drug education: when taxing the sells, the money can be used to treat addiction.
Further the legalisation might change society's point of view on drugs which might make it easier for addicts to seek help without being judged.
Before being able to buy drugs from these state controlled entities, the buyer should be required to acquire some kind of license. I imagine the license similar to a first aid course. Participants should be educated about health risks, dosages, safer use guidelines and so on. There should be licences for different classes of drugs, e.g. opioids, stimulants, cannabinoids, psychedelics and so on.
Of course. These should require licences as well. I might even go a step further and ban alcohol and tobaco from being sold in supermarkets but only in the same stores where you could buy the other drugs.
Just make it a legal produc. The question is how many people would use some RCs or drugs with extreme side effects when they had access to ordinary weed. Also, something like opiates can be unbelievably cheap. There is a reason laudanum was the drug of choice of the poorest segments of society. Its byproduct of the existing poppy harvest and many countries currently have to spend money to get rid of it by washing any poppy seed before selling it. Without having to worry about blowing through a month wage in no time because of the black market cost, the resulting withdrawal and suffering the effects of what ever it was laced with, almost all unwanted side effects would be gone.
The question is what do you do with drugs who change the behavior of the user dramatically to the degree that they become a risk to others. We currently have that problem with alcohol and see the side effects in violent and reckless behavior. From domestic violence to drunk driving. The answer might be to shift the approach from restricting possession to restricting consumption and being under the influence in certain areas or situation where they might become a danger to others.
The only open question I see is how to deal with expensive, addictive substances that change the behavior of its consumers. Crack comes to mind.
Germany and other places do opiate maintenance with diamorphine (heroin). You go in and get to shoot up as much as you want then go about your day. Sounds nice.
Sounds shit to me but I fully respect any system that allows it. These people can probably get on with some sort of life in between their hits instead of spending their lives trying to get in a position to get high agsin.
Switzerland has a program where clean heroin is given to addicts. Since the program started in 1994, none of the participants died from an overdose or other problems caused by impure drugs.
Also, as long as you have a clean substance, it is actually easier and healthier to taper of heroin by lowering the dose than by substituting it with something like methadone. The last withdrawal when going from a low dose to taking nothing anymore is way heavier when coming of methadone than it is for heroin.
im not sure id encourage the use of full diamorphine for this id argue using straight morphine is sufficient, its also cheaper for the service to provide (also cheaper than the likes of methadone too as far as im aware)
Reduces the chance of them using black market stuff though. I'm not sure the actual cost of the legal diamorphine is much in the scheme of things.
Update: "The cost of a year's diamorphine treatment for an addict is about £15,000, although this includes administering and supervising the injections."
Compare: "CEA estimates that
in 2015, the economic cost of the [US] opioid crisis was $504.0 billion, or 2.8 percent of GDP that
year." And 33,000 deaths.
It can be worth intervening to stop these things going exponential.
Interesting question! Yeah, nostalgia or... inertia maybe? I think the original synthetics were developed as “legal highs” and thus filled a particular demand for “smokable leaves that get you high” as a substitute product for weed.
And when you think about it there are practical advantages.
The form factor is not bad, compatible with your existing lighters, papers, pipes and so on and takes up “the right amount” of space (harder to lose but still concealable). Lungs are an excellent drug delivery system. You can also use it out in the open since there are existing (legal) things it could be.
You could distribute it “pure”, but it would be a lot more fiddly (tiny bags) and require a fragile (and suspicious) glass pipe, lightbulb, alufoil or what-have-you. Harder to maintain for your “addict on the go”. From a marketing perspective, much more threatening (crack/meth associations).
“Injectibles” have similar (but worse) downsides.
A pill, or snortable powder could work? Probably these do exist already - lots of dodgy pills around, some of them are bound to have these actives. Generally slower onset though and less of a high than smoking the same thing. Also somewhat different market.
Have not seen synthetic edibles or oils but no reason it couldn’t be done.
If you were going to “startup the heck out of it” you would probably go for some kind of juul-like vape. Subscription, of course....
To enable them to be smoked cheap and easily - which in return means the user feels the effects almost immediately. Same reason why majority of users smoke rather than eat cannabis.
Use Firefox Reader View after the page covers the content with the article limit banner. Reader View is an icon that appears on the right side of the address bar.
Even better: These extensions let you open the page directly in Reader View, the 1st via context menu, the 2nd via list of sites to be always opened in Reader View:
I got caught by a dark pattern asking me subscribe with an x to close option. Clicking the x option navigated me away and then informed me that I'd reached an article limit when I tried to go back to the article. Might just be my fat fingers(they are not fat) but its still not a great user experience.
You're going to use a mythological figure to prove that cannabis makes you think more clearly? I think you've smoked a bit much there, buddy.
If we look at the scientific research, certain studies have claimed that aspects of creativity could be enhanced with cannabis (often based on self-reports rather than objective measurements), but those results are inconclusive at best. Cognitive impairments due to both acute and chronic cannabis use are much more well-documented. Here is a review of executive function deficits due to cannabis use:
If you want to argue that cannabis should be legal, I have no issue with that. But the way to go isn't to say "it's a cognitive enhancer", which it is not to the best of our scientific understanding.
I wouldn't call it a cognitive enhancer. It enhances some processes while inhibiting others. Cannabis can help people make breakthroughs in certain things like yoga and music. It really puts you in touch with your feelings, both bodily and emotional. There's a reason it's insanely popular with hindu mystics and musicians...
About Adiyogi being a myth, we've established archeological proof of the sites, so it's not simply a myth, it's debatable.
What should i read from the link you posted, if it's you reading that text and accepting it as 'truth' then let me tell you, it's nothing more than your belief (ground for a shared madness or religious maybe?). It's not science, I've experience in academia, i already know how the data is cherry picked to match the narrative of the person or whoever is paying for the study. I won't accept it.
As for me, I've been using Cannabis for years, i already know what it has changed in my life. It's all positive.
