I can see what you're saying. But it doesn't make the reporting of it any less important, or at the very least informative. Nor does it take away the human tragedy even if it is only in microcosm.
Just speculation, but at least in the US it is/was marketed as "legal weed". Nearly everyone that I knew trying it did so because their weed connect dried up.
Is the weed situation much more lax in the UK than in the US?
yes. For small personal amounts it is all but decriminalised in name.
If you get caught, more often than not it is confiscated / thrown away.
Same for growing for personal (no scales, no baggies, no tick list at the property, no "sorting a few mates out" - actually personal), a few plants and nothing will happen, at worst a few hours of community service
Weed is a class B drug, some people get tested for it some don't know where to get it. There is probably a very small market for synthetics in the UK, were weed legal, but I doubt it would amount to much.
I say this as someone mildly involved in the UK RC scene who knows a few users. Most of them would switch to the real thing in a heartbeat were it legalised.
Cannabis has been reclassified from class C to class B.
Other drugs in class B are: Amphetamines, barbiturates, cannabis, codeine, ketamine, methylphenidate (Ritalin), synthetic cannabinoids, synthetic cathinones (eg mephedrone, methoxetamine)
Theoretical sentence for possession is Up to 5 years in prison, an unlimited fine or both
And theoretical sentence for distribution is Up to 14 years in prison, an unlimited fine or both
So we're nothing like the US (where simple possession could get you a life sentence) but it's wrong to say that possession of small amounts of cannabis is ignored in England.
EDIT: spice is popular because it wasn't being tested for in prisons, while cannabis was; and because it was legal.
> So we're nothing like the US (where simple possession could get you a life sentence)
To be fair, the life sentences are due to the idiodic "Three Strikes" laws (I really wonder why those aren't considered double-jeopardy). I don't think you can go to prison for life for simple possession in any state otherwise.
I didn't realise this was a problem in NYC too, but I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.
Here's a recent video from Vice on Spice use in the UK (Spice is just the brand name, it sounds like it's basically the same as K2, though the chemicals involved evolve over time so perhaps it's better to say they're in the same group of drugs):
Before I watched this I'd heard synthetic drugs were dangerous, what surprised me was how addictive they appeared to be (people in the video compared its addictiveness to heroin).
This only proves to serve as a point that you can't fight economics or force people to stay sober and clean. The situation would likely be better if they just legalized marijuana proper which would likely be a preference to most, much in the way that people prefer alcohol meant to be consumed instead of what you buy for cleaning wounds.
I don't follow this logic. K2 seems to be cheaper and a better high so why wouldn't you take it vs regular cannabis? Legalization wouldn't really change a thing.
It would make cannabis cheaper, and I don't think most people are saying k2 type drugs are better(I wouldn't know). Just that it's more addictive. On top of that these drugs only exist because of drug laws.
The only people I've heard that claims K2/other synthetic cannabis provides "a better high" are self-destructive stereotypical drug abusers (like in this article) who want to escape from life.
Regular people often have horrible experiences with it, ranging from just really uncomfortable experiences to full psychotic episodes. It's not benign and relatively harmless like cannabis usually is.
Cannabis is safer in the sense that there has been more research into its effects. Synthetic cannabis is pushed onto the market without the same level of testing, so they represent an unknown quantity, they could be safer but they could also be more dangerous, and as the chemicals involved are being altered to avoid being banned, you're rolling the dice every time you take them.
I was in Seattle a couple of weeks ago, and it has a very obvious (to UK eyes) drug problem[1]. Try walking around at 6am and you'll see plenty of narcoleptic users glassy eyed or sleeping on the streets. I assumed it was heroin or prescription opiates, but maybe it was Spice/K2 instead?
[1] And I should say I'm not talking about the legal drugs - alcohol, tobacco, cannabis - but there's a problem with at least one of those too.
So maybe I'm out of the loop, but this article never really seems to explain why K2 is so bad and why it specifically is to blame for the issues in the article. I tried it about 8 years ago, and it was kind of like being stoned on pot but not nearly as fun. I cant imagine the same thing happening when people smoke pot, so I'm wondering why K2 is to blame here. But I'm not sure, cause there's little information in the article.
Maybe I'm cynical but this feels like a drummed up press release for the woman mentioned in the article's campaign to ban this thing.
It's almost like satire at this point. "Hey, this fake weed that showed up because real weed is illegal is causing all sorts of problems. I bet if we make it illegal, all of these problems will go away. And I'll get re-elected."
The hysteria over synthetic drugs in general is unwarranted, reactionary nonsense.
That said - within the UK 'RC' scene, synthetic cannibinoids tend to be looked down on or avoided more than other unknown or novel compounds, because they can be unpleasant and (psychologically?) addictive. They also seem to have caused various kidney problems and stuff. The general consensus is that it would be good if weed were legalised so these things just went away.
I say within the RC scene, I mean the online scene. Head shops are doing a roaring trade in the stuff.
> The hysteria over synthetic drugs in general is unwarranted, reactionary nonsense.
It sounds like you have some knowledge and evidence of their safety. Knowledge that neither I nor the rest of the world has. Why don't you share it then?
From what I've read and seen of the medical issues associated with these untested substances the reactions seem entirely appropriate.
I'm referring to things like the media scares over 'bath salts' and the tendency a couple of years ago to blame everything on them. Many/most of the extreme cases turned out to be nothing to do them.
Oh and in the UK - mephedrone, which was banned purely because it became popular. Nobody did themselves much harm with it until after prohibition.
As far as I could ever tell there was only one widely reported (before prohibition), and it was misreported by the press. The substance that killed that guy was methadone.
--edit-- I see from a quick scan of wikipedia that there were a very few deaths
The only one definitely cause by mephedrone and pre-ban I can see was "The first death reported to be caused by mephedrone use was that of 46-year-old, John Sterling Smith, who had underlying health problems and repeatedly injected the drug"
Post-ban in the UK, well, impurities came in and things started to go wrong. Wikipedia lists a number of deaths where mephedrone was present, but AFAICT there were very few where it was causative.
I shall tone down my initial statement - mephedrone appears to have been a relatively safe drug, given the huge scale if its use pre-ban and the very small number of deaths.
As far as I am aware (and all this is second hand knowledge as I stopped taking drugs and moved away from it all about 8 years ago, but am still in contact with a few old friends) the synthetic cannibinoids are all nasty and far worse they what they are trying to replace - cannabis. Far more cases of people losing it / psychosis / blacking it / fitting etc than most of the illegal drugs.
As they are easily available, they tend to be more popular among the young (in some areas) who perhaps know less people on how to get actual cannabis.
Hey kids, don't smoke this plant, which is actually pretty safe* smoke these unknown, brand new chemicals some dodgy chemist has knocked up to bypass some laws.
It is all but directly comparable to prohibition, don't drink these safe regulated spirits, drink this moonshine made in some guys bathtub where the profit is paramount and safety be damned.
Yet another case of illegality causing more harm, more problems and costing more than legalisation ever would.
*but not 100% safe, does cause issues in some etc etc
> Maybe I'm cynical but this feels like a drummed up press release for the woman mentioned in the article's campaign to ban this thing.
Look, it's not good that people are ruining their lives on this stuff but to a certain degree it seems that you might be right:
> “If I weren’t on this I might be angry, I might be hitting her. Who knows what I would be up to,” he said, his words trailing off with each drag of the cigarette. “This stuff makes me calm.”
Out of all the possible evils, super-stoners seems like the least: compare the stoner stereotype to the crackhead stereotype. If you take K2 away, what are these people going to turn to (because they are going to turn to another drug)?
Anything between "a bit like weed" and "overwhelming, scary, nightmarish".
People who use this stuff regularly who also hold down jobs tend to use the tiniest pinch. Most of what's on sale is so massively over-strength that it's extremely unpleasant if you're not very careful.
Until you get used to it that is. The people in the article are used to it.
Yeah, I never tried the stuff but I had a few friends who did years ago. From their descriptions, it was like a much more potent, long-lasting, and somewhat less pleasant version of being high on cannabis. Basically, like being very high but not necessarily in a good way.
They only smoked a small amount, hearing that it was quite potent, so nobody had a "bad trip" or anything but they all mentioned how such a thing would be easy. I've had anxiety attacks from smoking too much regular old cannabis in the past so I can imagine how a drug with similar (but stronger) effects could easily go from being super baked to the worst of the paranoia and anxiety you may have experienced with too much strong cannabis.
edit: another issue is the range of potency. With normal "bud" cannabis, there's only so strong it's likely to be. When you're talking about some solution sprayed on plant material for smoking, the dosage can be much harder to determine without trying some first. I could probably take one puff of the world's strongest weed and there would be an upper limit to how stoned that could make me. With anything "laced" or concentrated and sprayed, you could be getting several times the desired dose with even a few puffs.
All true. The cannibinoids themselves are far more potent than THC too, much higher binding affinities for the receptors, so while it's more or less impossible to actually overdose on THC, that's not the case with these.
yeah I know, it's easily possible to have more than you're comfortable with...
Not sure why you'd think it "interesting". Why would you want any kind of drug-induced high? It's basically just screwing around with your neurotransmitters and giving you a similar experience to what you can achieve naturally, but with the disadvantage of receptor downregulation. I've tried weed, and to be honest the stoned "high" wasn't really much fun or very interesting -- I have much better experiences in real life. (If you haven't, I'd perhaps suggest that you're doing real-life wrong).
>> Why would you want any kind of drug-induced high?
While I wouldn't want anyone getting into synthetic cannibinoids like in the article...
If you don't understand this at all, if you don't understand why people enjoy drugs and drink, that makes you the odd one out, not him.
>> I have much better experiences in real life. (If you haven't, I'd perhaps suggest that you're doing real-life wrong).
You can have both. You don't have to have either great life experiences or enjoy a drug once in a while. That's a weird attitude. Oh, and if you can naturally do anything that comes close to either MDMA or LSD, I'll eat my hat. And my shoes.
>if you don't understand why people enjoy drugs and drink, that makes you the odd one out, not him.
I understand why they enjoy it, I just think the downsides (downregulation) far outweigh the benefits.
>Oh, and if you can naturally do anything that comes close to either MDMA or LSD, I'll eat my hat. And my shoes
Lucid dreaming would be the natural equivalent, and with the benefit of zero health risk (including no downregulation of anything) and control over the experience.
Perhaps you need to do some more research. Downregulation lasts about a year if you're a chronic user/abuser. Even a single bottle of whisky causes downregulation for something like a week (that's from memory -- I can't find the reference right now). This probably applies more to alcohol/cocaine/opiates rather than LSD.
Not combative, just my impression after seeing the after-effects of alcohol/cocaine dependence by friends and family (including my father, who died recently). It's not fucking pretty, and certainly not fun when you get to that state. What's your personal experience of addiction?
Sounds like a plan to ensure CIA drug monopoly stays in place.
Like nearly all drug related stories in mainstream: full of bullshit and missing informations...
Graham Hancock put it nicely:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-b6-0yW7Iaw
49 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 157 ms ] threadThis too shall pass.
Is the weed situation much more lax in the UK than in the US?
If you get caught, more often than not it is confiscated / thrown away.
Same for growing for personal (no scales, no baggies, no tick list at the property, no "sorting a few mates out" - actually personal), a few plants and nothing will happen, at worst a few hours of community service
And a criminal record, and never being able to travel to the USA or various other countries again for the rest of your life.
Nothing big...
You have a funny idea of decriminalisation.
Weed is a class B drug, some people get tested for it some don't know where to get it. There is probably a very small market for synthetics in the UK, were weed legal, but I doubt it would amount to much.
I say this as someone mildly involved in the UK RC scene who knows a few users. Most of them would switch to the real thing in a heartbeat were it legalised.
Other drugs in class B are: Amphetamines, barbiturates, cannabis, codeine, ketamine, methylphenidate (Ritalin), synthetic cannabinoids, synthetic cathinones (eg mephedrone, methoxetamine)
Theoretical sentence for possession is Up to 5 years in prison, an unlimited fine or both
And theoretical sentence for distribution is Up to 14 years in prison, an unlimited fine or both
This specialist solicitor has some case reports of mostly large quantity: http://www.mjreedsolicitors.co.uk/news/cannabis-cases/cannab...
So we're nothing like the US (where simple possession could get you a life sentence) but it's wrong to say that possession of small amounts of cannabis is ignored in England.
EDIT: spice is popular because it wasn't being tested for in prisons, while cannabis was; and because it was legal.
To be fair, the life sentences are due to the idiodic "Three Strikes" laws (I really wonder why those aren't considered double-jeopardy). I don't think you can go to prison for life for simple possession in any state otherwise.
Here's a recent video from Vice on Spice use in the UK (Spice is just the brand name, it sounds like it's basically the same as K2, though the chemicals involved evolve over time so perhaps it's better to say they're in the same group of drugs):
http://youtu.be/t6pmc7Tpx4w
Before I watched this I'd heard synthetic drugs were dangerous, what surprised me was how addictive they appeared to be (people in the video compared its addictiveness to heroin).
And as for 'better'.... Is Thunderbird train 'better' than beer? To the guy on under the bridge, maybe I guess.
Regular people often have horrible experiences with it, ranging from just really uncomfortable experiences to full psychotic episodes. It's not benign and relatively harmless like cannabis usually is.
[1] And I should say I'm not talking about the legal drugs - alcohol, tobacco, cannabis - but there's a problem with at least one of those too.
Do you mean "narcotic users", or is this some strange word pun?
Maybe I'm cynical but this feels like a drummed up press release for the woman mentioned in the article's campaign to ban this thing.
It's almost like satire at this point. "Hey, this fake weed that showed up because real weed is illegal is causing all sorts of problems. I bet if we make it illegal, all of these problems will go away. And I'll get re-elected."
That said - within the UK 'RC' scene, synthetic cannibinoids tend to be looked down on or avoided more than other unknown or novel compounds, because they can be unpleasant and (psychologically?) addictive. They also seem to have caused various kidney problems and stuff. The general consensus is that it would be good if weed were legalised so these things just went away.
I say within the RC scene, I mean the online scene. Head shops are doing a roaring trade in the stuff.
It sounds like you have some knowledge and evidence of their safety. Knowledge that neither I nor the rest of the world has. Why don't you share it then?
From what I've read and seen of the medical issues associated with these untested substances the reactions seem entirely appropriate.
Oh and in the UK - mephedrone, which was banned purely because it became popular. Nobody did themselves much harm with it until after prohibition.
That's not true. There have been quite a few fatal mephedrone overdoses in the UK.
As far as I could ever tell there was only one widely reported (before prohibition), and it was misreported by the press. The substance that killed that guy was methadone.
--edit-- I see from a quick scan of wikipedia that there were a very few deaths
The only one definitely cause by mephedrone and pre-ban I can see was "The first death reported to be caused by mephedrone use was that of 46-year-old, John Sterling Smith, who had underlying health problems and repeatedly injected the drug"
It's not exactly a surprise at that point.
I shall tone down my initial statement - mephedrone appears to have been a relatively safe drug, given the huge scale if its use pre-ban and the very small number of deaths.
As they are easily available, they tend to be more popular among the young (in some areas) who perhaps know less people on how to get actual cannabis.
Hey kids, don't smoke this plant, which is actually pretty safe* smoke these unknown, brand new chemicals some dodgy chemist has knocked up to bypass some laws.
It is all but directly comparable to prohibition, don't drink these safe regulated spirits, drink this moonshine made in some guys bathtub where the profit is paramount and safety be damned.
Yet another case of illegality causing more harm, more problems and costing more than legalisation ever would.
*but not 100% safe, does cause issues in some etc etc
"Won't someone think of children and legalise all drugs"
Then some actual sensible progress will be made
Look, it's not good that people are ruining their lives on this stuff but to a certain degree it seems that you might be right:
> “If I weren’t on this I might be angry, I might be hitting her. Who knows what I would be up to,” he said, his words trailing off with each drag of the cigarette. “This stuff makes me calm.”
Out of all the possible evils, super-stoners seems like the least: compare the stoner stereotype to the crackhead stereotype. If you take K2 away, what are these people going to turn to (because they are going to turn to another drug)?
People who use this stuff regularly who also hold down jobs tend to use the tiniest pinch. Most of what's on sale is so massively over-strength that it's extremely unpleasant if you're not very careful.
Until you get used to it that is. The people in the article are used to it.
They only smoked a small amount, hearing that it was quite potent, so nobody had a "bad trip" or anything but they all mentioned how such a thing would be easy. I've had anxiety attacks from smoking too much regular old cannabis in the past so I can imagine how a drug with similar (but stronger) effects could easily go from being super baked to the worst of the paranoia and anxiety you may have experienced with too much strong cannabis.
edit: another issue is the range of potency. With normal "bud" cannabis, there's only so strong it's likely to be. When you're talking about some solution sprayed on plant material for smoking, the dosage can be much harder to determine without trying some first. I could probably take one puff of the world's strongest weed and there would be an upper limit to how stoned that could make me. With anything "laced" or concentrated and sprayed, you could be getting several times the desired dose with even a few puffs.
yeah I know, it's easily possible to have more than you're comfortable with...
While I wouldn't want anyone getting into synthetic cannibinoids like in the article... If you don't understand this at all, if you don't understand why people enjoy drugs and drink, that makes you the odd one out, not him.
>> I have much better experiences in real life. (If you haven't, I'd perhaps suggest that you're doing real-life wrong).
You can have both. You don't have to have either great life experiences or enjoy a drug once in a while. That's a weird attitude. Oh, and if you can naturally do anything that comes close to either MDMA or LSD, I'll eat my hat. And my shoes.
I understand why they enjoy it, I just think the downsides (downregulation) far outweigh the benefits.
>Oh, and if you can naturally do anything that comes close to either MDMA or LSD, I'll eat my hat. And my shoes
Lucid dreaming would be the natural equivalent, and with the benefit of zero health risk (including no downregulation of anything) and control over the experience.
Downregulation is temporary and personally I want to experience everything. My time with likes of LSD is over now, but I'm glad I did it.
Fun and entertainment.
> I'd perhaps suggest that you're doing real-life wrong
Why be so combatitive? Your experiences maybe valid for yourself, but that doesnt make it right for everyone else