Immitation Marijuana Use on the Rise

Apparently mar­i­juana lovers have found a legal loop­hole in obtain­ing the high of their choice — a vari­ety of prod­ucts sold as incense, laced with syn­thetic chem­i­cals sim­i­lar to the psy­choac­tive chem­i­cals found in marijuana.

Real mar­i­juana

JEFFERSON CITY, Missouri — There may be noth­ing like the real thing, but some indus­tri­ous mar­i­juana users have seized on an obscure but eas­ily acces­si­ble sub­stance that mim­ics the drug’s effects on the brain — cre­at­ing a pop­u­lar trade in legal dope that has stymied law enforce­ment authorities.

The users are buy­ing a prod­uct known as K2 — or “Spice,” Genie” and “Zohai” — that is com­monly sold in head­shops as incense. Produced in China and Korea, the mix­ture of herbs and spices is sprayed with a syn­thetic com­pound chem­i­cally sim­i­lar to THC, the psy­choac­tive ingre­di­ent in mar­i­juana. Users roll it up in joints or inhale it from pipes, just like the real thing.

Though banned in most of Europe, K2’s key ingre­di­ents are not reg­u­lated in the United States — a gap that has prompted law­mak­ers in Missouri and Kansas to con­sider new legislation.

“This isn’t Jerry Garcia’s mar­i­juana,” said state Rep. Jeff Roorda, a Democrat from the east­ern Missouri town of Barnhart. “They’ve used chem­i­cals to avoid cre­at­ing some­thing that’s already illegal.”

Authorities in Johnson County, Kansas, dis­cov­ered ex-convicts on pro­ba­tion smok­ing K2, and said it is spread­ing to high school students.

“This has become extremely pop­u­lar,” said Linda Weber, owner of The Vise smoke shop in a St. Louis sub­urb, who said she only sells to adults.

She said she sells about 60 pack­ages a week, with sup­pli­ers call­ing her weekly to pitch new brands. She said she’s keep­ing an eye on what state law­mak­ers decide, though, because “I def­i­nitely don’t want to be sell­ing it if it comes out that it’s harmful.”

K2 costs between $20 and $50 for three grams — sim­il­iar to the street price of mar­i­juana — but with the key advan­tages of being legal and unde­tectable in drug tests.

The key ingre­di­ents are believed to be the unin­tended result of sci­en­tific research on marijuana’s effects.

Dr. John Huffman, a Clemson University organic chem­istry pro­fes­sor, was research­ing the effects of cannabi­noids on the brain when his work resulted in a 1995 paper that con­tained the method and ingre­di­ents used to make the com­pound. That recipe found its way to mar­i­juana users, who repli­cated Huffman’s work and began spray­ing it onto dried flow­ers, herbs and tobacco.

“People who use it are idiots,” said Huffman, refer­ring to K2 smokers.

Read the entire arti­cle on Fox News.