Last updated : December 23, 2024
On April 21, Time magazine’s cover story was on “fake pot.” By “fake pot” the author, Eliza Gray, was referring to the myriad of compounds sold mostly to kids and young adults that purport to deliver the same high as marijuana, while being legal and generally undetectable with standard drug tests. These synthetic marijuana substitutes go by names like K2 and Spice and are sold over the counter at convenience stores. They are usually created by spraying chemicals on some inert leaf. Users then smoke the leaves as if they were marijuana. The result can be a high of sorts or it can be something much worse.
Manufacturers of these products skirt the law in two ways: first by labeling their products as potpourri or air freshener with the disclaimer “no for human consumption”; second by altering the chemical formula for the active ingredient whenever legislators outlaw their current product. Congress has outlawed 26 synthetic drug combinations but Congress can’t keep up with the drug makers.
These chemicals present a significant danger to users. The chemicals used are untested, making the results of consumption quite unpredictable. The application of the spray to the inert leaves yields concentrations of the chemicals that vary widely, making the use of synthetic marijuana even more unpredictable and dangerous. The drugs can cause seizures, vomiting and excessive heart rate. In Dallas and Austin in the first week of May almost 120 people overdosed on K2. Even a “brand name” synthetic marijuana is unreliable as the manufacturers constantly change the formulation and cannot grantee consistency of the potency. Repeated use damages the organs in the body responsible for cleaning out toxins-liver and kidneys. The latest data available shows that in 2010 over 11,000 users of synthetic pot went to the emergency room. As demonstrated in Dallas and Austin, that number is surely on the rise. There have even been a few documented cases of death from synthetic pot.
The Federal Government finally took action on May 7 when the DEA raided synthetic drug manufacturing operations in 29 states. More than 45 DEA offices executed nearly 200 search warrants, arresting over 150 people and seizing more than $20 million in cash and assets. The Treasury Department has also gotten into the act announcing that synthetic drug traffickers would be designated as kingpins under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act. This allows Treasure to freeze all assets and bar anyone from doing business with the kingpins.
As a business owner, manager or HR professional, use of synthetic marijuana by your employees should be a concern. While it’s true that synthetic marijuana will not be detected by a standard drug test, there are tests available to look for synthetic drugs. The most important step you can take is to ensure your supervisors are trained to detect drug use-both the acute symptoms like slurred speech or pronounced clumsiness and the indirect symptoms like tardiness or a change in personality. Once the supervisor has documented the issue, if the first drug test comes back negative, consider expanding the scope of the drug test to include synthetics. You may be saving the employees life and your business at the same time.
