Fake Weed, Real Drug: K2 Causing Hallucinations in Teens
Toxicologists at three universities and two governmental agencies have launched a study into the effects of a synthetic drug being used by some smokers as a legal substitute to marijuana. Credit: AP Photo/Kelley McCall
Teens are getting high on an emerging drug called "fake weed," a concoction also known as K2 and "spice" that is also causing hallucinations, vomiting, agitation and other dangerous effects.
In the last month, Dr. Anthony Scalzo, a professor of toxicology at Saint Louis University, has seen nearly 30 cases of teenagers experiencing these adverse effects after smoking the fake weed, a legal substance that reportedly offers a marijuana-like high.
"K2 use is not limited to the Midwest; reports of its use are cropping up all over the country," Scalzo said. "I think K2 is likely a bigger problem than we're aware of at this time." For instance, Atlanta has seen about 12 cases recently.
K2 has been sold since 2006 as incense or potpourri for about $30 to $40 per three gram bag – comparable in cost to marijuana.
"K2 may be a mixture of herbal and spice plant products, but it is sprayed with a potent psychotropic drug and likely contaminated with an unknown toxic substance that is causing many adverse effects," said Scalzo, who also directs the Missouri Regional Poison Control Center.
BREAKING: Los Angeles sued over new medical marijuana law
A lawsuit filed Tuesday challenges Los Angeles' crackdown on medical marijuana dispensaries, claiming it would force nearly all of them to close.
The suit by the nation's largest medical marijuana advocacy group accuses the city of violating the state constitutional rights of pot clinic operators and claims the city ordinance "deprives the seriously ill of the medicine promised them by the electorate and the Legislature of California."
It wants a judge to permanently prevent the new law from being enforced and to award damages.
City attorney's spokesman Frank Mateljan had no immediate comment.
California voters passed a law in 1996 that legalized marijuana use for medical reasons, but it didn't say anything about distribution. So some cities have permitted dispensaries to flourish while others, such as Costa Mesa and Fresno, have effectively banned them and arrested owners.
Los Angeles has been struggling for years with the issue of controlling dispensaries. The ordinance that the mayor signed last month caps the number of dispensaries in the city at 70.
City officials have estimated there could be as many as 1,000 outlets in the city and that some sell pot as a business. Last month, the city filed lawsuits and eviction notices against 21 dispensaries and arrested one owner.
Special delivery: 45 pounds of marijuana instead of computer, thanks UPS
A Bringle Ferry Road resident eagerly awaiting a new computer ripped open a large box delivered by UPS on Tuesday morning to find 45 pounds of marijuana.
Sarah Howell Leach, of 1017 Bringle Ferry Road, immediately called police to report the delivery.
Lt. Rodney Harris, acting chief of the Salisbury Police Department, said the marijuana is worth an estimated $35,000 in today's market. A few years ago it would have been worth considerably more.
The package from McAllen, Texas, was sent one-day air to be delivered to another mobile home in the park. The UPS driver mistakenly delivered the box to the wrong address.
Harris said officers immediately set up surveillance of the mobile home — which has been vacant for months — hoping the intended recipient would pick up the shipment. The recipient was listed as "Jack Lance" on the package.
Double Toke! Ammiano Reintroduces Bill to Legalize, Tax Marijuana
Assemblyman Tom Ammiano has reintroduced his pioneering bill seeking to legalize and tax pot in California.
In a statement released this afternoon, Ammiano's office said the San Francisco Democrat hopes the new legislation will build on support garnered by AB 390, his first pot-legalization measure, which passed out of committee in Sacramento but overran its deadline for consideration by the rest of the Legislature.
The bill's expiration last month appeared more or less in line with the grand strategy of Ammiano, who said he wanted to take plenty of time to build consensus on the issue. Now AB 2254, the latest incarnation of the Marijuana Control, Regulation, and Education Act, will get a second shot.
"We're even more optimistic about the fate of this bill than we were about AB 390," Aaron Smith, California director for the Marijuana Policy Project, told SF Weekly.
Quentin Tarantino: Brad Pitt does not smoke pot while acting; I don’t smoke while directing
Quentin Tarantino and Brad Pitt like their reefer -- but Tarantino swears neither was high while shooting "Inglourious Basterds." "Brad doesn't smoke while he's acting," Quentin told us at a Thursday lunch celebrating his film's Oscar nominations. "And I don't smoke while I'm directing."
However, he achieved his riotous masterwork, more than a few handicappers think the "Basterds" could ambush the Best Picture chances of "Avatar" and "Hurt Locker." (The flick's SAG win suggests Academy actors will compensate Tarantino for "Pulp Fiction" being robbed of its gold in '95.) Next up for Tarantino? "I'd like to do a Western. But rather than set it in Texas, have it in slavery times.
With that subject that everybody is afraid to deal with. Let's shine that light on ourselves. You could do a ponderous history lesson of slaves escaping on the Underground Railroad. Or, you could make a movie that would be exciting. Do it as an adventure. A spaghetti Western that takes place during that time. And I would call it 'A Southern.'"
Four Things Not To Say To A Medical Marijuana Patient… can you get me some good pot?
Muraco Kyashna-Tocha, 49, of Seattle, has grown marijuana legally since 1999. Kyashna-Tocha has had five neck and back surgeries and said that using marijuana manages her pain enough so she can engage in daily life. Credit: Chris Joseph Taylor/The Seattle Times
If you happen to be a medical marijuana patient like me, you’re well aware that there are lots of folks who still harbor some enormous moral judgments about cannabis and those who use it medically — even in the states where it is legal.
If you aren’t a patient, chances are you may either already know one, or soon will. As the acceptance of the medical use of pot grows, so does the number of patients choosing this option.
So let’s talk about those moral judgments.
Medical marijuana patients are too often given to understand that we should somehow feel vaguely guilty about the relief that we get through using the herb.
We are given, intentionally or not, little cues which seem to carry the message “You are a little less than entirely acceptable to polite society.”
To some of us, that feels a lot like “Why don’t those people just stay at home?”
While “interacting” with a proudly ignorant Twitter user today, I was freshly reminded of this unfortunate dynamic, and it got me thinking about the same old tired, threadbare judgments and stereotypes that patients must deal with, over and over and over again.
Sometimes the attitudes manifest themselves a little more subtly.
AUDIO: Will Legalizing Pot Solve California’s Budget Woes?
By at least one estimate, California's largest cash crop is not milk, cheese, or oranges, it's marijuana. Some advocates say legalizing pot — and taxing it — could be a way out of the state's financial woes, and they recently secured enough signatures for a ballot initiative to do just that. But how much revenue a legal pot industry generates would depend on how prices are set.
And it isnt just Los Angeles having budget trouble, the whole state is in the throes of a full-blown fiscal crisis. But it looks like Californians may get the chance to vote on a novel way to help balance the books. The proposal? Legalized pot, then tax it. So, how much money would that raise? Well, that depends on complicated economic questions like what would a joint sell for on the open market?
Heres NPRs David Kestenbaum with our Planet Money team.
DAVID KESTENBAUM: Right now, the price of marijuana varies a lot. The government actually studies these things. Researchers go into holding cells or if people have been arrested and asked questions like what do you pay for marijuana?
VIDEO: Times Square Billboard From NORML Denied By CBS
With great regret and chagrin to report, CBS has rejected a contract deal with NORML to place a pro-cannabis law reform advertisement on the biggest electronic billboard in Times Square (The CBS ‘Super Screen’ at 42nd St) claiming that the advertisement is too political. NORML had a contract for the 15 second spot below on the giant billboard (and a second one featuring President Obama and New York City’s high cannabis arrest rate with its shocking racial disparity in enforcement).
VIDEO: Introduction to Cannabis Hemp and industrial revolution
PeaceBud explains how the political changes in America's past along with the industrial revolution has led us into a historical era of post-industrial Oil Wars.
Construction plant: “Some devotees think it’s the answer to everything,” says Pete Walker of hemp
Ian Pritchett, chairman of Lime Technology, in a field of industrial hemp Credit: Ben Stansall
The director of the UK’S Building Research Establishment Centre for Innovative Construction Materials at the University of Bath recently started a £740,000 project, funded by the UK government and the construction industry, to study and develop the material’s use in building. The research builds on foundations laid more than a thousand years ago. Archaeologists in France have discovered a sixth-century bridge where the stones are held together with hemp mortar.
Cultivated for thousands of years for its fibres, which are used to make ropes and textiles, hemp, otherwise known as Cannabis sativa, was so important to the economy during King Henry VIII’s reign that farmers had to grow at least a quarter of an acre or risk a fine. In the latter decades of the 20th century production slumped as cotton cloth and man-made fabrics became prominent but in the 21st century hemp’s reputation is being rebuilt, partly thanks to properties that make it an ideal building fabric for homes.
Marijuana magazine has fruitful debut in Denver
The woman gracing Kush Colorado's centerfold is long-limbed and lovely, but the new magazine's real star is the marijuana plant she clutches to her breast.
Billed as the "premier cannabis lifestyle magazine," the slick glossy debuted in Colorado last month, one more sign of galloping growth in the state's medical-marijuana business.
The city of Denver has more than 300 medical-marijuana dispensaries, the highest number in the nation outside California.
The pace of growth in the industry prompted the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws to recently name Denver "America's cannabis capital." While Los Angeles has more than 1,000 dispensaries, Denver outstrips the City of Angels on a per-capita basis, with more storefronts selling pot than Starbucks shops peddling coffee.
