Search Results: synthetic cannabinoids (36)

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One of the chief attractions of synthetic cannabinoids — which are, make no mistake about it, NOT “synthetic marijuana” or anything near it — has been that these substances don’t show up on conventional drug screening tests, which after all, aren’t designed to detect them. God knows they don’t have many attractions, and no stoner in his or her right mind would ever smoke these blends if real weed is available.

This has made “herbal blends” (which are actually vegetable matter sprayed with chemicals) popular in such settings as the military and jobs which are subject to piss tests. But even that advantage will probably soon be gone, leaving synthetic cannabinoids the sole province of poor schlubs who can’t score any real weed.
Adding to its portfolio of test offerings for designer drugs — which also includes a bath salts drug test for synthetic cathinones — Ameritox‘s synthetic cannabinoids drug test now provides quantitative results for metabolites from 15 synthetics that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) placed into Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act on an “emergency basis” this summer.


New York City emergency rooms are seeing an outbreak of synthetic smokable drug-related illnesses, according to the city’s health department.
The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene issued a warning on Sunday urging people not to buy or use “synthetic cannabinoids,” which are often sold at head shops under names like K2, Spice, and Green Giant. The agency says it’s gotten reports of 15 fake weed-related emergency room visits over the past two days, concentrated in East Harlem, Central Harlem and Chelsea.

Does this look anything like weed to you?


We’ve been saying it for years now: syntheic marijuana is absolutely nothing like real marijuana whatsoever and doesn’t deserve the inaccurate moniker whatsoever.
And it seems the Baton Rouge, Louisana coroner agrees with us.
“This is a poison,” Dr. Beau Clark, East Baton Rouge Parish’s coroner, tells The (Baton Rouge) Advocate. “It’s not really anything like marijuana.”

(U.S. Air Force photo illustration by Tech. Sgt. Michael R. Holzworth)


One of the darkest examples of the consequences of cannabis prohibition is the rise in recent years of synthetic marijuana alternatives, such as the all-too-popular brand K2, or “Spice”.
Although these so-called “synthetic cannabinoids”, intended to simulate the effects of real weed, are already banned in many states, and have been the focus of several high-profile DEA raids of late, the creators of the chemical mixtures simply alter their recipes ever so slightly to sidestep law enforcement and prosecution.

These synthetic smokables do not resemble marijuana.

Stephane Colbert says her 19-year-old son died in 2011, allegedly after he smoked a synthetic, lab-made c compound called “Mr. Smiley” that many news outlets are calling “synthetic marijuana”..
Synthetic weed was banned federally in May of 2011 but Nicholas Colbert still was able to purchase some of the stuff in September of that year from a neighborhood Kwik Stop in the Springs.

Photo: The Julius Axelrod Papers
Dr. Julius Axelrod, pictured above, conducted some of the original research which culminated in the United States government getting a patent on all cannabinoids in 2003.

​​​Welcome to Room 420, where your instructor is Mr. Ron Marczyk and your subjects are wellness, disease prevention, self actualization, and chillin’.


Worth Repeating
By Ron Marczyk, R.N.

Health Education Teacher (Retired)

The United States federal government holds a “medical patent” for all cannabinoids — a patent which it has held since 2003.
Let’s take a look at the rationale behind this patent, and highlight the good news it actually contains for disease prevention, medical treatment and for cannabis legalization.
This patent was the outcome from research conducted by:
• Dr. Aiden J. Hampson, a neuropharmacologist at the National Institute for Mental Health (NIMH) in Bethesda, Maryland 
• Dr. Julius Axelrod (1912-2004), Professor Emeritus, National Institutes of Health, pharmacologist and neuroscientist who shared the 1970 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine
• Dr. Maurizio Grimaldi, professor of neurology/neuropsychopharmacology and toxicology, NIMH
Here’s how it all went down in 1998.

Photo: Dan Gill/The New York Times
Julie Meyers, 20, smokes “synthetic marijuana” at Petra Cafe and Hookah Bar in St. Louis days before Missouri’s ban was signed into law.

​It was bound to happen, sooner or later, and this is the first time Toke of the Town has heard of it: Laralee Herron, 20, entered the annals of hemp history (though probably not how she wanted) when she was arrested Sunday night in West Monroe, Louisiana, for possession of “synthetic marijuana.”

A search revealed “synthetic marijuana” in Herron’s purse, according to an affidavit. She was charged with “possession of synthetic marijuana” and bond was set at $750.
Eager officers didn’t waste any time getting started on enforcing their shiny new law. Young Herron got busted on the very day that Louisiana’s ban on “synthetic marijuana” went into effect — August 15.
Back on June 29, Gov. Bobby Jindal signed into law House Bill 173, making it a crime to possess, sell or manufacture the synthetic drug, and the law took effect Sunday.

Photo: WuTangCorp.com
Vegetable matter is sprayed with synthetic cannabinoid JWH-018 and marketed under the brandname “K2”

​Federal agents are cracking down in imports of a “synthetic marijuana” as the substance, legal in 49 states (everywhere except soon-to-be-illegal Kansas), gains popularity nationwide.

Officials claim Food and Drug Administration regulations bar the important and sale of JWH-018, a synthetic cannabinoid, “because it is not a tested and approved drug,” reports Peter Mucha at the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Eighty-five parcels have already been seized at Philadelphia International Airport after tests proved positive for JWH-018, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Officials said the parcels were arriving from Amsterdam at a UPS facility at the airport.


An administrative law judge this week ordered the state to allow PTSD sufferers to use medical marijuana, reversing a decision by the state health-services department.
Will Humble, director of the state DHS, wrote about Wednesday’s decision by state Administrative Law Judge Thomas Shedden in his blog last week.
“I have until July 9 to either accept, reject or modify the recommended decision,” Humble wrote. “I’ll be studying the report and will make a decision after analyzing the Decision and Order.”

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