In 15 seconds, name as many drugs as you can. What
did you come up with? Does the list include heroin, marijuana, and meth? Maybe
you also thought of cocaine, ecstasy, LSD, alcohol, or the wide variety of
prescription drugs. But what about Spice, Molly, Bath Salts, Krokodil, and K2?
A recent
report
by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) shows that the
manufacture and use of synthetic drugs is skyrocketing – in 2008, about 80
synthetic psychoactive substances had been reported; by 2013 that number had
grown to 348. And it’s kids who are widely using these drugs. For example, the
National Institute on Drug Abuse reports that
in 2012, 11.3 percent of high school seniors reported using synthetic marijuana
(mostly Spice) within the past year.

Often regulations lag behind reality. The UNODC report shows
that since 1961, the number of controlled narcotic drugs has stayed nearly even
(think heroin). And since 1990, the same is true of psychotropic substances
(think LSD). But largely starting in 2009, hundreds of new psychoactive
substances have flooded world markets, and many of these substances are yet to
be controlled, especially at the international level. This means that even if
new synthetic drugs are made illegal in the United States, they may remain
uncontrolled in their countries of origin, leading to easy manufacture and
distribution via the internet.

For example, synthetic marijuana under names like Spice, K2,
Skunk, Moon Rocks and others, has been widely available in head shops and has
even been sold alongside vitamins and energy mixtures at convenience stores and
gas stations. Often the drug is marketed as a legal, herbal alternative to
marijuana and, on first look, appears to be a tea-like mixture of dried plants.

It’s anything but. These herbs are never the cause of the
substance’s psychoactive properties, which are instead caused by a range of
synthetic chemicals added to the plant mixture. The chemicals in Spice and
other synthetic marijuana drugs vary, but most mimic the effects of cannabis in
the brain, attaching to the same “receptors” that cause the drug’s feeling of
hallucination or euphoria.

Because the chemicals in these mixtures are new and unknown,
synthetic drugs like Spice can also have wildly unpredictable effects. The U.S.
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSHA) reports that
in 2010, there were an estimated 11,406 emergency room visits due to the use of
synthetic cannabinoids. Thirty-three percent of these patients were between the
ages of 12-17 (compared with only 12 percent of ER visits related to
traditional marijuana in the 12-17 age group). In marijuana-related ER visits,
the drug was combined with another drug 69 percent of the time; in synthetic
marijuana-related ER visits, it was the synthetic alone that most often sent
the patient to the ER, and was combined with other drugs only 31 percent of the
time.

Synthetic marijuana is only the tip of a very large iceberg.
Hundreds of new, designer, synthetic, club drugs fall into categories like aminoindanes, phencyclidine-type
substances, phenethylamines, piperazines, synthetic cathinones, and
tryptamines.

Take
Molly, which is a purified form of ecstasy also known by the chemical name MDMA
(or 3-4 methylenedioxymethamphetamine). Popularized by Miley Cyrus and the
rapper, Tyga (among other celebrities), 7.1 percent of high school seniors have tried the
drug. Or consider Bath Salts, commonly a mixture of the stimulants mephedrone
and methylone, which in some ways mimic the effects of MDMA. A report by SAMHSA links Bath Salts to 22,904
emergency room visits in 2011. 

“Bath
salts drugs can cause heart problems, high blood pressure, seizures, addiction,
suicidal thoughts, psychosis and, in some cases, death – especially when
combined with the use of other drugs,” says Dr. Elinore McCance-Katz, SAMHSA’s
chief medical officer, in the report.

The
overreaching danger of these drugs comes from the collision of three important
factors: 1) these drugs are unpredictable; 2) these drugs are dangerous and addictive;
3) these drugs are marketed to young users in a way that makes them seem safe.
These factors make young people underestimate the risk, too often with dramatic
medical consequences.

Policy and law enforcement are struggling to catch up with
what doctors and scientists already know: synthetic drugs are as dangerous (or
more so) as traditional drugs like heroin and cocaine. Giving a drug a cute
name like Spice or Molly makes it no less damaging to the brains and bodies of
the growing population of young people experimenting with or addicted to these
drugs.

**

Richard
Taite is founder and CEO of Cliffside Malibu, offering evidence-based,
individualized addiction treatment based on the Stages of Change model. He is
also co-author with Constance Scharff of the book Ending
Addiction for Good.