K2 incense, Spice, and Herbal ‘Incense’ -Synthetic Marijuana Health Risks/Side Effects

There have been countless reports from all over the country of the various side effects and health risks.

Confirmed reports of:
Hyperventilation
Heart attack
Hallucinations
Tics- involuntary movements
Nausea/vomiting
High rates of addiction similar to meth, cocaine, and opiates
Prolonged headaches/migraines lasting for days after consumption
Severe paranoia leading to brash or malicious acts
Increased heart rate
Physical addiction, heroin-like withdraw symptoms
Bloody nose
Convolutions
Seizures
Death

There are countless publications around the internet about the many side effects synthetic marijuana produces in the human body. Considering how relatively new synthetic marijuana products are, and how such a small fragment of the population actually uses these products, it’s staggering how often synthetic marijuana events make it into the main stream media.

The media is put in an awkward position regarding synthetic marijuana. There is an old adage stating that “there is no such thing as bad publicity.” Any attention drawn to these products, whether it be positive or negative will undoubtedly stir interest amongst a certain fragments of the population.

However, it is beyond the initial point of discovery for many individuals concerning synthetic marijuana products, and it is time to bring to light the true facts about these substances. One can achieve a “high” from many house hold products (paint, markers, whiteout, ect..) but it is a fact that using these products is detrimental to your health. Synthetic marijuana products should fall into this category, as they have almost nothing to do with real marijuana, and they are compounds created in laboratories that are not sanctioned under FDA guidelines.

The following is an excerpt from WebMD about synthetic marijuana.

Legal Herbal Products Laced With Designer Drugs: Not Your Father’s Marijuana

By Daniel J. DeNoon
WebMD Health News
Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD
March 5, 2010 — K2 incense, Spice Gold, and dozens of other currently legal “herbal incense” products are spiked with powerful designer drugs — and they don’t show up in drug tests.

As early as 2004, this type of product began appearing for sale on the Internet and in head shops in Europe. By 2008, sales throughout Europe soared; U.S. and Canada sales took off in 2009.

“I believe it is everywhere in the United States,” Marilyn Huestis, PhD, chief of chemistry and drug metabolism at the National Institute for Drug Abuse, tells WebMD.

Package labels feature psychedelic art and claim that the contents are a mixture of various herbs. But unlike smoking the herbs listed on the label, smoking the products produces effects similar to those of marijuana, hashish, and other forms of cannabis.

“Hospitals in Europe began to report instances where a person appeared with all the symptoms of cannabis intoxication, but their drug screen was negative,” Huestis says.

Users, parents, public health officers, and enforcement agencies all want to know: What really is in these products? How safe are they? Are they addictive?

Here are WebMD’s answers to these and other FAQs.

What drugs are in K2 incense, Spice Gold, and other herbal incense products?

Initial tests of Spice Gold and similar products found no illegal substances and were not able to detect active ingredients in k2 incense that could explain the “high” they produced in users. The tests also were unable to detect most of the herbs the products were supposed to contain.

Finally, in late 2008, Volker Auwarter, ScD, and colleagues in the forensic toxicology lab at the University Hospital Freiburg, Germany, found that k2 incense products contained at least two different designer drugs known as synthetic cannabinoids.

The drugs detected by Auwarter had the same chemical signal as drugs detected — but not identified — in samples of Spice brand product tested privately by the user-oriented Erowid drug information web site in 2007.

Like THC, the active ingredient in marijuana and other forms of cannabis, these synthetic cannabinoids turn on the cannabinoid receptors found on many cells in the body. The brain is particularly rich in the CB1 cannabinoid receptor.

But most synthetic cannabinoids are quite different chemical structures from THC. And unlike cannabis, the new drugs have never been tested in humans.

Read the entire K2 Incense health risks FAQ at WebMD

From page 2:

And there are good reasons to believe that some if not all of these drugs contained within k2 incense are unsafe. JWH-018 and its many cousins, for example, have a chemical structure shared with known cancer-causing agents.

JWH-018 inventor John W. Huffman, PhD, puts it bluntly.

“It is like Russian roulette to use these drugs. We don’t know a darn thing about them for real,” he tells WebMD.