Teens in Britain getting legally high on synthetic cannabis banned across Europe

Spice, as it is known on the street and in school playgrounds, has already been banned by at least four European nations including the Netherlands, where smoking small amounts of cannabis is tolerated.

Spice contains JWH-018, a synthetic psychoactive substance which gives what the Royal Society of Chemistry has described as a “marijuana-like high”.

JWH-018, a cannabinoid receptor, was created by an American academic purely for research purposes in 1995.

Last month Christian Steup from THC Pharm, a German company that makes legal painkillers from cannabis, detected JWH-018 in several packets of Spice, according to the RSC’s Chemistry World magazine.

He said the substance was four to five times more potent than tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main psychoactive substance in cannabis.

Organic chemist John W Huffman, who discovered the compound and lent his name to it, said he did not think it was toxic but admitted that he did not know.

via Teens in Britain getting legally high on synthetic cannabis banned across Europe – Telegraph.

Oh no!  There is a new synthetic pot that’s claimed to be 4 to 5 times stronger than the deadly skunk, which itself has been claimed to be 7 to 400 times stronger than regular old marijuana!  And since regular old marijuana is considered to be a Schedule I drug, the most dangerous category of drugs that have no medical purporse, like PCP, LSD, and heroin, then this “Spice” must be super-duper dangerous!

Right.  Nowhere in the article does anyone point out any known toxicity or proven dangers of JWH-018, but there is a speculation that since cannabis has those terrible links to depression, schizophrenia, and psychosis, that use of “Spice” will lead to an epidemic of mental health issues.

Except that these supposed links from cannabis to depression, schizophrenia, and psychosis are wildly overblown and mostly non-existent and that JWH-018 is not chemically similar to THC, so it’s a stretch to speculate that they would affect the mind similarly.

That said, we’ve done decades of research on THC and next to nothing on JWH-018.  I wouldn’t recommend being the beta tester for any new untested synthetic chemical.  Let’s let the unbiased scientists study this “Spice” and until we know the facts, stick to nature.