I saw this article in the San Diego Union Tribune written by Amina Kahn of the LA Times. Also published in the "Press Reader." Synthetic Cannabinoid Data Point to High Risk The report was written as a news article, not an opinion piece. It appeared to report on a study done by extracting data from the National Poison Data System to declare that synthetic cannabinoids are becoming a national health crisis. What bothered me was that it looked to me that the author of the article and the authors of the study were presenting data in such a way to sensationalize this "crisis" rather than present it in an objective way. You can tell from the way the article is worded that the author of the article and study want the Government (DEA probably) to crack down harder on all recreational drugs. Of course, the only way of doing this is to take away more citizen's rights.
The study determined that there were 15 deaths from Jan to May 2015 compared to only 5 during same period the previous year. This could have been compared to the average of 75 killed and as many as 300 injured from lightning strikes in the US. How relevant are those 15 deaths when CDC says There were over 16,000 homicides in the US last year and over 11,000 from guns? Where are our priorities?
In the article, the authors complain that "Because the producers of psychoactive drugs can tweak their formulas, it is hard for the Government regulators to keep up." I've heard this complaint many times from the anti-drug crowd. Usually the new "drugs" are sold as something else, such as potpourri or bath salts in order to avoid arguing with the "lords of the drug war." It appears that purveyors of these substances are always "guilty until proven innocent" --So even if they came up with a "perfect recreational drug" the anti-drug warriors and DEA would move to make it illegal (like Marijuana) and it could take decades to test it and get it legalized. Over the years, sometimes "anti-drug warriors" have arrested people selling legal substances (for example: oregano) as marijuana. Those situations embarrassed the police for false arrests and not recognizing drugs (which isn't easy). So now there are laws that make it illegal to possess or sell materials as drugs even if they aren't
One of the main problems of the synthetic drugs is the fact that most recreational drugs are illegal. That causes people to experiment with other drugs. Economists call this "cross elasticity of demand." Because the "good drugs" are illegal, people want to find ways of obtaining and using drugs that are easier to hide, more difficult to detect, and more difficult to get arrested for having in possession. Obviously concentrated synthetic cannabinoid is smaller and easier to hide than a bundle of pot. Even better if it is disguised as incense or bath salts. Yes, it is more difficult to arrest someone for having a bag of potpourri in their possession. Also, because these drugs are made in "home laboratories" it is very likely that they have dose concentration quality control problems, as well as sanitation and purity issues. I wonder how many of the poison center calls were due to errors in dosage of the various synthetic drugs? How many were due to mental illness or attempts at suicide? There were over 41,000 suicides in the US in 2013 There were probably many times more failed attempts at suicide. Could any of these deaths or calls to poison hotlines been suicide attempts?
Why would people take a chance on a synthetic drug if they could get "the real thing" at reasonable cost and no risk of arrest? It will be very interesting to see how these statistics compare over the next few years in the states that have legalized recreational marijuana. Will people continue to take chances on "home brew" uncontrolled drugs? Or will the relatively easy access to legal marijuana eliminate that problem. It appears to me that a very large amount of our US population is making a very good income from fighting the "drug war." This includes, prison guards, judges, bailiffs, prosecutors, police, FBI, Homeland Security, Coast Guard, drone manufacturers, and, of course, all of the other contractors selling hardware, software or services to those agencies. If we didn't have illegal drugs, many would be out of a job! It would eliminate gangs, money laundering, car searches etc. These people are generally wealthy and are influential through very large political donations. They are all watching Washington & Colorado and are clearly trying to find fault in the state's "experiment" with legalization. I'm sure we will hear a lot more biased, and hopefully some unbiased news reports in the future.
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