Synthetic marijuana has reached epidemic proportions.
Chandler Jones of the New England Patriots wandered half-naked into a Foxborough, Massachusetts, police station in a bewildered haze Jan. 10. Jones was hospitalized for what was reported to be a pain-pill overdose.
The real culprit? Spice, a synthetic substance meant to mimic the effects of marijuana.
Robert Nkemdiche, potential first-round pick in the 2016 NFL Draft, also experienced the effects of spice firsthand in December. While high on spice, he barreled through a hotel window harder than an opposing lineman and fell 15 feet to the ground. He was hospitalized and arrested for possession of marijuana.
Many news outlets would have you believe that spice is just like marijuana, except it won’t cause users to test positive for THC, its psychoactive ingredient. Andrew Jones of the Guardian said spice “gives users feelings of relaxation...and altered perception — just like real marijuana.”
This narrative is misinformed. More importantly, it’s dangerous.
A quick YouTube search of “bad spice reaction” should convince you that spice is nothing like “real marijuana,” which even the DEA admits has never killed anyone.
The first search result contains footage of a man writhing like a beached whale in a street-side gutter as onlookers take videos of the spectacle.
If the peculiar cases of Jones and Nkemdiche don’t convince you, take that of Iowa teen David Mitchell Rogza, who shot himself in the head with his father’s rifle in 2010 after spice convinced him that “he was in hell.”
Six years later, spice is only growing in popularity.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported that through the first half of 2015, spice had claimed 15 lives, three times as many as it had over the same period in 2014.
Through April 2015, there had been more than four times the number of spice-related calls to poison control centers than there had been during the same period in 2014, according to the American Association of Poison Control Centers.
The debate over marijuana legalization has been the issue served for some time now, and perhaps legalization would curb the epidemic.
But I’m not here to beat a dead horse.
If use of marijuana is to remain a criminal offense, the very least institutions like schools, governments and drug prevention groups can do is increase awareness of the terrible effects of its synthetic counterpart.
If we’re going to tell our youth not to use marijuana, then we must also warn them of the ghastly effects of spice.
It’s the very least we can do to honor the lives of Rogza and countless others who have been cut down by a drug that is talked about far too little.
