It’s a legal high, it’s cheap, it’s potent – and extremely dangerous. K2, also known as ‘Spice’ and ‘Flakka,’ is creating addictions and ruining lives in cities across the USA, especially New York. Yet it’s sold openly in brightly coloured packages that often look alarmingly like candy, and can be bought every bit as easily. Just walk in and walk out with your little bag of poison.
Brian Arthur, a resident of Brooklyn NY, posted a video last week on You Tube that resembled a scene from a zombie horror movie, showing a number of people passing out and staggering uncontrollably in the streets where he lives.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4LDK2kE5xA
Evidently, they had all ingested the same batch of K2, which had turned out to be highly toxic. Later reports, confirmed by the New York Police Department, said that 33 people had been hospitalized as a result of the incident.
K2 is marketed as synthetic marijuana because it works in a similar way on the human system, to produce psychoactive effects. It looks like marijuana and, again like marijuana, it’s ingested by rolling it in a paper and smoking it. But there the resemblance ends. K2 is produced by spraying green vegetable matter with a combination of acetone – a heavy-duty cleaning fluid – and any number of mysterious, unnamed chemicals. The ingredients, of course, are not listed on the packaging.
Ironically, while marijuana is still illegal in several U.S. states, K2 is legal in all of them. Whenever legislation bans an active component, all the makers have to do is tweak its chemical composition to create a new version. Their legal high is legal once again.
The base chemicals are imported mostly from labs in China, then mixed and packaged here. Alternatively, the product may be bought ready mixed and discreetly brought in. For exporters and importers alike it can be a highly profitable business, and it’s growing fast. Interviewed for an article in Britain’s Guardian newspaper, Rusty Kane of the Drug Enforcement Administration said:
“There are thousands and thousands of drug labs in China and elsewhere, and none of them – the labs, the distributors, the corner stores – care about the effects. All they want is your money.”
In 2009, the American Association of Poison Control Centers (AAPCC) recorded a total of only 14 cases of exposure to ‘synthetic cannabinoids.’ The following year that figure leapt to just less than 3,000, and in 2015 reached nearly 8,000. The AAPCC lists the health effects as:
- Severe agitation and anxiety.
- Fast, racing heartbeat and higher blood pressure.
- Nausea and vomiting.
- Muscle spasms, seizures and tremors.
- Intense hallucinations and psychotic episodes.
- Suicidal and other harmful thoughts and/or actions.
It almost goes without saying that it also carries a high risk of direct or accidental fatality. And it’s ferociously addictive. In just one of many alarming accounts gathered by the nonprofit Foundation For a Drug-Free World, one former user said:
“I became hooked while on probation. I used it to get high and still beat drug tests. I went from a gram or less a day to over three or four a day. As my addiction progressed, my ability to control basic behaviors and motor skills deteriorated. I grew more aggressive when I became upset, which became more frequent the more and longer I used. One morning I had a psychotic break during which I blacked out and almost killed my wife.”
Watch this horrifying report on K2 in New York, from Jay Dow for the Pix11 network.
Image is a screenshot from YouTube.
