
Spice is throwing up problems not seen with other drugs - prostoalex
https://www.economist.com/britain/2018/09/29/spice-is-throwing-up-problems-not-seen-with-other-drugs
======
philipkglass
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.

~~~
hguhghuff
So right. By desperately hanging on to criminalization of pot, politicians
have created a much worse situation.

My question is, is spice an issue in the places where pot is legal?

~~~
RealDinosaur
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.

~~~
baby
> In London, I got asked 4 times a day!

lived in London for more than a year, I got asked maybe 10 times in that
entire time. They are often polite and never aggressive.

~~~
balt_s
Thanks for the anecdote, baby.

------
fizx
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.

~~~
disgruntledphd2
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).

------
vertex-four
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.

~~~
DanBC
> 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.

~~~
GordonS
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.

~~~
DanBC
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.

Go and talk to street homeless people sometime.

~~~
GordonS
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.

------
dbmikus
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.

~~~
black6
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.

~~~
oh_sigh
Dude Chinaman is not the preferred nomenclature.

~~~
bootsz
Asian American, please!

~~~
bitxbitxbitcoin
But he is presumably talking about a man from China who has never been to
America. What if Chinaman is actually be the accurate term here lol.

~~~
bootsz
This isn't a guy who built the railroads here, this is a guy....

This entire sub-comment thread is just quoting a scene from the Big Lebowski,
in case you haven't caught on :)

------
arountheworld
> 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.

~~~
gaspoweredcat
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

~~~
drewmol
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.

~~~
sudosteph
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.

~~~
gaspoweredcat
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

~~~
sudosteph
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.

------
Urdoinnitrong
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.

------
electic
[https://outline.com/uzZP8x](https://outline.com/uzZP8x)

------
m-i-l
Also published today "Spice: a lethal epidemic fuelled by austerity":
[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/29/spice-...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/29/spice-
lethal-epidemic-austerity-drug)

------
TheSpiceIsLife
What are we going to do?

Should some kind of 'Basic Assistance' include fairly unlimited metered doses
of whatever drugs a person may want?

Fully legal, regulated, and taxed?

What would an idealised harm reduction programme look like?

~~~
bfuller
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.

~~~
hguhghuff
>> 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.

~~~
vbrandl
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.

------
simonebrunozzi
[https://outline.com/uzZP8x](https://outline.com/uzZP8x)

------
BugsJustFindMe
> _chemicals sprayed onto dried plant leaves and smoked._

Huh. Why? What's the point of spraying them on dried plant leaves? Nostalgia?

~~~
xyzzy123
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....

------
madnerd
He who controls the spice controls the universe.

~~~
em-bee
The spice must flow!

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therealidiot
I've reached the article limit, despite having never browsed

~~~
sergiosgc
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limit banner. Reader View is an icon that appears on the right side of the
address bar.

~~~
severine
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