An Article About Synthetic Pot

[bungholio]

Three teenagers in Texas appear to have had heart attacks caused by smoking synthetic marijuana, doctors reported Monday.

While smoking marijuana is known to affect the heart, such as by increasing the heart rate, synthetic pot -- known as K2 or Spice -- may represent an additional risk. These drugs contain synthetic cannabinoids and have become popular among illicit drug users because they do not show up on toxicology screens.

Doctor at UT Southwestern Medical Center described three recent cases of heart attacks in teen-agers using K2. All three were 16-year-old boys who said they had smoked marijuana recently but also admitted to using K2 within the past few days or within the prior week. Each boy was otherwise healthy and had no signs of cardiovascular disease. But each reported intermittent chest pain shortly after smoking K2. The youths were treated and recovered.

Efforts are underway nationwide to make sale and possession of K2 illegal. However, new synthetic drugs could already be in circulation, the authors of the report noted, and K2 and Spice are readily available around the country. It's impossible to say what ingredients go into these synthetic drugs, they added.

"Lack of information regarding the origin of these compounds as well as other chemicals possibly contained in these products makes their use dangerous and unpredictable," they wrote.

I was reading this and remember a few times reading about how even though you kept getting the same brand and type or whatever and you could never be sure of what was in it. I used to enjoy the old JWH18 stuff when I first learned of it before it was banned. It was great. Me and my friend played a lot of Black Ops online at the time and often got our butts kicked. Then we had some of the stuff, and we were unstoppable killing machines taking no effort and laughing our heads off the whole time thinking "Is it really this stuff that is causing us to do this amazing?" We tried it over and over and we can verify the stuff will turn you into an unbelievably awesome online player. Usually I didn't live for more than 5 seconds at a time because there was always somebody who just "appeared" behind me and shot me in the back and I was dead. It was beyond frustrating. Had some stuff, and I couldn't stop killing and was rarely ever killed. It was amazing. There was about 2 months of that. We still can't believe it.

But then I tried some other stuff, and they all had varying horrible effects that made me feel like I was going to die. Even buying the same stuff had different effects after new shipments making the crap unpredictable and it made me stop. JWH18 with that Damiana leaf or whatever was awesome. They banned it and then they still had the other stuff going around the law. I tried the other stuff and they all had varying effects. Some were good, most were bad. One caused a very increased heart rate and I threw it away. Another caused me to unknowingly piss myself. Another caused me to hold my butt and mouth shut for about 2 hours straight so I wouldn't uncontrollably vomit or crap myself. A few things that were working had different effects depending on where you bought them. One had no effect of any kind. Another caused paranoia to the point of sitting absolutely silent without moving or making a sound out of severe paranoid fear, and I guess it made me entirely misinterpret everything my friends were saying because I had trouble believing what they said and responded to nothing because of it. I can honestly say there is nothing surprising about it killing people with it containing random other ingredients that I don't believe there is any way on Earth to have any safe or enjoyable effects from. Never could trust them. Haven't bothered with anything since way back in January.

[Sly Hedgehog]

sound like it's a very dangerous drug as Meth is

i stay the heck away from those bad drugs...

[bungholio]

It wasn't until they started banning the normal synthetic stuff with just JWH18, then they started creating stuff around the ban that wasn't made illegal yet, and then they just started throwing all kinds of random crap in there. Some of the stuff is rumored to be as bad as meth, cocaine, and heroine. I'd never recommend bothering to try to find it anymore, there's no trustable source. You're likely to get a mix of the stuff that would just destroy you. But the very first stuff was perfectly fine.

[OldSchoolGamer]

If alcohol is illegal, than marijuana must be illegal.

If alcohol is legal, than marijuana must be legal.

So they should either be both illegal or both legal. You can't have one legal and the other one illegal.

[BeyondTheStatic]

It wasn't until they started banning the normal synthetic stuff with just JWH18, then they started creating stuff around the ban that wasn't made illegal yet, and then they just started throwing all kinds of random crap in there. Some of the stuff is rumored to be as bad as meth, cocaine, and heroine. I'd never recommend bothering to try to find it anymore, there's no trustable source. You're likely to get a mix of the stuff that would just destroy you. But the very first stuff was perfectly fine.

There are so many problems surrounding the whole issue.

They illegalized cannabis, so synthetics were eventually born (maybe prematurely) and just recently started becoming mainstream. Then they banned some synthetics, so other (possibly worse) synthetics were introduced and applied to well-known (yet still untrustworthy) products. So grey-market companies continue to dope their sh!t with unknown quantities of unknown chemicals (trade secrets and whatnot), and the consumer pays the ultimate price.

What we need is for the FDA to regulate these preparations, instead of banning them outright. Bans only lead to underground markets, and underground markets only lead to people not knowing what the h3ll they're getting. Regulate a substance or preparation, and you can control the dosage and age target. Ban a substance or preparation, and you leave it to the winds. It's as easy as that.

Personally, I liked JWH-018. But people were careless with it, especially the people behind such massed-produced products like K2 and Spice, and of course the people buying those said products. Pure substances are a responsibility, and too many people are irresponsible. That's why we have a runway effect. We need to adapt to reality instead of just crossing our fingers!

[OldSchoolGamer]

Bans only lead to underground markets, and underground markets only lead to people not knowing what the h3ll they're getting. Regulate a substance or preparation, and you can control the dosage and age target. Ban a substance or preparation, and you leave it to the winds. It's as easy as that.

That's absolutely correct. But there are such drugs, like the 'hard drugs', that should be/stay illegal. Users/addicts who are repeat offenders should not be incarcerated, instead they should be sentenced to lengthy stays in rehab because using is not a crime, it's an illness.

[dlevere]

The Faces Of Meth

Grown people are going to do what they want to do. But I am going to show you THE FACES OF METH.

Even after having her face melted off after an illegal meth lab exploded, a Florida woman has been busted again for manufacturing the drug.



Sheriff's deputies arrived at a trailer on Monday and were shocked to find severely disfigured Heather Raybon there with another man, both surrounded by drug paraphernalia in the midst of a working meth lab, reported Fox10TV.com.

The 31-year-old had been permanently scarred when a drug den blew up in 2004 but even with her face left a distorted, melted mask she couldn't keep away from the addictive drug.

In the latest incident, narcotic detectives found materials and ingredients to cook up crystal meth, along with 13 grams of meth powder and 32 grams of meth oil. There was such a strong risk of explosion from the one-pot lab that police called the fire department to safely neutralize it.


Before: Heather Raybon, pictured in 2003, has been arrested by police on meth charges, despite suffering massive facial injuries when a meth producing lab exploded in her face in 2004


After: Taken in 2006 after the meth, Raybon suffered permanent and extensive damage to her face which almost melted off

[OldSchoolGamer]

She was probably so depressed about her face that she just gave up and said 'screw it' and continued to use because she knew nobody would ever marry her and she would never be happy with a normal life so she continued to use meth. Plus the combination that she is addicted. That's so sad. (Atleast it seems like her face started to improve in the last 2011 picture.)

Meth isn't a big problem where I live (yet). I know it's a huge problem in the midwest.

[BeyondTheStatic]

That's absolutely correct. But there are such drugs, like the 'hard drugs', that should be/stay illegal.

That was my first assumption, but really what we're doing by making/keeping any substance illegal is nannying the public. Don't get me wrong, there should always be limits to the distribution/availability of drugs. For instance, you should *never* give psychoactives to minors or otherwise mentally incompetent persons. But to simply possess or use any drug for personal use? Leave that up to the insurance companies, but by all means leave the government out of it.

People will huff petrol if they have no other option. But give them the choice between gasoline and nitrous oxide, and 9 times out of 10 they'll choose the latter. And if the other 1/10th don't? Charge their facilitators (people they rent from, for instance) an exorbitant fee (for hospital/funereal services) for their foolishness in letting it go on.

Users/addicts who are repeat offenders should not be incarcerated, instead they should be sentenced to lengthy stays in rehab because using is not a crime, it's an illness.

Actually, our understanding of drug use is barely dawning. We may view it as an "illness," and we would be right, but the fact is we are all ill, some of us more than others. If I found Khat to work better for depression better than Pr0z@k, shouldn't I be allowed to choose the natural source? Or if I wanted to grow cannabis for its mild shade leaves and do without the more potent and expensive Marinol, shouldn't I be allowed to make the choice for myself? By saying this or that substance is illegal, we're creating a society of babies who can't trust themselves with their own decisions.

Of course, the world is becoming too populated, and what better people to have crammed in here than vegetables?

[BeyondTheStatic]

I've seen the Faces of Meth before, but this has got to be one of the worst. You don't even need to legislate the availability of that cr@p, not when you see a picture like hers.

I suppose this is where I should say, "well, now there's a case where a drug should be banned," but there's always a gotcha. For instance, this could be an anti-firearms poster portraying the dangers of black powder manufacturing. Or propaganda decrying the ills of petroleum distillation. Any old way you look at it, there are things you should and should not do. In this case, you shouldn't presume to know the vagaries of organic chemistry without having taken the proper safety precautions. Sorry to be so light about a heavy subject, but it's easy to blow things out of proportion :/

Meth isn't a big problem where I live (yet). I know it's a huge problem in the midwest.

It's a fairly big problem over here. People who use it tend to say "it makes me lose weight," but they are actually only losing fat in all the places they didn't intend, like their CNS, jaws and cheeks. Sad, but true. There are plenty of people with back and neck problems, who swear up-and-down that it's not the crystal that's dissolving their bone matter. If it makes you lose your teeth, dontcha think it might be having an impact on other calciferous structures as well?

[Demonic722]

Grown people are going to do what they want to do. But I am going to show you THE FACES OF METH.

Even after having her face melted off after an illegal meth lab exploded, a Florida woman has been busted again for manufacturing the drug.

Despite her addiction..., HOW THE HELL do you look like that, and continue to use the same thing that caused it...? Anyways, at school last year, a speaker came in to talk to us about drugs and how they affect you and such and during his/her (I can't remember) presentation the speaker showed us a video of how people looked before and after their addiction. Some of the people were effected badly by the drug, but this is by far the worst picture I've seen...

Edit:

It's a fairly big problem over here. People who use it tend to say "it makes me lose weight," but they are actually only losing fat in all the places they didn't intend, like their CNS, jaws and cheeks. Sad, but true.

Even though this is slightly irrelevant to what I'm quoting, I have a friend who is basically addicted to weed. Mostly all of his money goes to weed and most of the time he asks people for money to get it. Even in the mornings during school he's already high and can't focus on his work... So basically, and sad to say, he'll probably turn into one of those local potheads that need weed to survive.

If alcohol is illegal, than marijuana must be illegal.

If alcohol is legal, than marijuana must be legal.

So they should either be both illegal or both legal. You can't have one legal and the other one illegal.

Well, I think, to each his own in terms of drugs and alcohol. Meth, Heroin, and all of those drugs that leave you looking like those pictures should be illegal, but in some cases, Marijuana is used as a drug to cure people. I don't think alcohol should be illegal, but I do know someone that does both alcohol and drugs in conjunction and acts like an ass when it's in effect., but I digress.

[Sly Hedgehog]

that woman' face now will give me a nightmares...

i wish the stupid Meth NEVER EXIST!

[BeyondTheStatic]

Gasoline: a child's drug of choice in Angola

By Sibongile Khumalo (AFP) – Jan 15, 2011

LUANDA — An intoxicated boy shuffles along a teeming street in Luanda casually gulping vapours from a plastic bottle that contains gasoline, children's drug of choice in Africa's top oil-producing country.

Earth's "black gold" has fast-tracked Angola from the ravages of war to the heights of an emerging regional economy but in this capital city its main derivative has become a gateway drug that brings misery to poor communities.

Easy access to gasoline, typically sold from homes in lemonade bottles, has given rise to substance abuse -- with addicts as young as 10-years-old, in a country where rehabilitation resources are scarce.

Users are mainly homeless children and delinquents, whose families bore the brunt of Angola's nearly three-decade civil war which ended in 2002.

"I started to take gasoline two months ago, I take it to make me feel happy," slurred 11-year-old Bentinho, as a stoned barefoot friend in tattered clothes chimed in, saying he liked the drug because it was easy to find.

A red rash around the mouth and sunken red eyes are tell tale signs of gasoline users. Long term use risks brain damage, according to medical reports.

The country's Association Against Drugs Abuse estimates that around 15 percent of juvenile drug users are abusing gasoline, before advancing to crack cocaine and other hard drugs.

As a typical sign of the struggle to combat the menace, however, the forum does not have funds to offer rehabilitation programmes and is confined to running awareness campaigns around the city to counter abuse.

The abuse of gasoline first emerged in the early 1990's when Angola was impoverished, but an influx of workers attracted to Luanda by the oil boom has seen the number of users soar, drug experts say.

Young addicts who can't get help often stay on the drug for years until they finally outgrow the habit, but only after severely damaging their health.

full article

[BeyondTheStatic]

Even though this is slightly irrelevant to what I'm quoting, I have a friend who is basically addicted to weed. Mostly all of his money goes to weed and most of the time he asks people for money to get it. Even in the mornings during school he's already high and can't focus on his work... So basically, and sad to say, he'll probably turn into one of those local potheads that need weed to survive.

I know a similar person as well. He swears it works better than any prescription drug he's ever tried, but based on his actual state of mental health it's clear to everyone that it isn't helping him one iota. He's spent every dime on pot, various useless purchases and gasoline driving around friends on "errands." He's blasted through a sizable inheritance in just a few short months, he's lost his car and is now homeless, though possibly living with a speedfreak ATM. It wouldn't be so bad if he weren't always thrashing people's property and undermining people in insidious ways. According to him, weed was supposed to help him overcome his antisocial behavior, but it never did

Meth, Heroin, and all of those drugs that leave you looking like those pictures should be illegal, but in some cases, Marijuana is used as a drug to cure people.

You guys are right: there are some things that should stay illegal. But there probably also needs to be legal alternatives to these drugs, and licenses you can get to maintain responsible use.

[bungholio]

I've already seen that picture of that lady in the past few days in a few places. Another life destroyed.

I also hate those people that can't go a day without pot, they are definitely a bad problem. There's a comedian named Bill Burr who had a rant on a radio station about potheads like that that made me laugh that I recently saw on youtube about a week ago. A little when you really want to relax, no problem, it's a nice thing. If you can't go a day without it, you have a problem. Same applies to alcohol. Need to moderate yourself. Somebody or something is causing you enough stress to drive you to keep using it to get through a day, you need to find a a better solution.

http://www.scienceblog.com/47959/mar...ptsd-symptoms/

Out of my lack of knowledge though, just flat out ban crack, cocaine, meth, and heroine. I know nothing of ecstasy other than it easily killing people and being studied and found to cause a permanent change to the human brain the first time it is used, but that could probably just be banned too.