Dangers of marijuana-like herbal mix drawing attention

By Matt Chittum

It goes by many names: K2, Cloud 9, Spice, Magic Gold, Buzz, Smoke, Skunk.

The melange of herbs sprayed with a synthetic marijuana substitute is blooming in popularity, and making users sick and being outlawed as it does.

The stuff, still legal in Virginia, announced its presence in the region Thursday night with an ambulance call to a Blacksburg home, where two 19-year-old men smoking "Bayou Blaster" were taken to the hospital with vomiting, accelerated heartbeats, and in the case of one man, violent seizures, police said.

It's the latest in the cycle of designer drugs to hit the market, only to be banned as the law catches up to them.

"Anytime these people put these unregulated and uncontrolled drugs into their bodies, they're truly playing Russian roulette with their bodies," said Tim Harden, resident agent in charge at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in Roanoke.

Poison control centers in 46 states and Washington, D.C., have tallied 761 cases involving the "herbal incense" as of Friday, according to the American Association of Poison Control Centers. Most have come from Georgia, Indiana, Missouri and Texas, with a "handful" from Virginia, said the organization's spokeswoman, Jessica Wehrman.

Calls in Western Virginia have been mainly for information, not emergencies, and have come from rural areas as much as cities, said Chris Holstege, medical director of Blue Ridge Poison Center at the University of Virginia Health System.

Rutherfoord Rose, director of the Virginia Poison Center in Richmond, said his office has seen about a dozen calls related to the products in eastern Virginia, all cases treated in emergency rooms between Richmond and the Tidewater area.

Roanoke and Roanoke County police are aware of the products, commonly referred to by the popular brand names of K2 or Spice, but reported no problems.

The DEA treats the products as a "drug of concern," Harden said. Agents are actively gathering information to see if they need to be added to the government's schedule of controlled substances.

It's essentially vegetable material labeled as "herbal" that's sprayed with a laboratory copy of marijuana's active ingredient, Unlike marijuana's THC, the fake drug causes greater agitation and anxiety, an accelerated heart rate and sometimes seizures, Harden said.

"We do know it's being sold here, and I'm not going to tell you where," Harden said. "I do know you can buy it here in Roanoke."

Smoking Joe, on Electric Road, sells 3-gram packets of K2 for $34.99. The packets are displayed in a case next to handblown glass pipes, and are sold as incense.

A sticker on the packaging says, "NOT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION," and that "K2 is a novelty herbal incense which includes natural and synthetic ingredients."

Sam Alotibi, a clerk at Queen Tobacco on Brambleton Road, said would-be customers ask for K2 at least twice a week. The store doesn't sell the stuff, he said. Those seeking it are mostly men in their early 20s, Alotibi said. That fits the profile of K2 users, Harden said.

"It's young folks who would normally not go out and buy marijuana because of the legal issues," he said. "They see this stuff on the rack at a head shop or a convenience store, and it's out in the open and for them, it must be OK."

Terms like "herbal" and "incense" on the label make it seem more benign, Harden said.

K2 and other brands are also widely available on the Internet. One site, K2incenseblend.com, contained conditions of use that ask buyers to agree to take responsibility for any personal injury and other damages.

"I also state that I am not a law enforcement officer or a government employee. I further state that I am not associated with nor affiliated with any government agency nor am I ordering product under the instruction of any government agent or agency," the conditions say.

The website says the company says it won't ship to states where the products have been banned.

Kansas was the first. Kentucky, Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia have followed. In all, 10 states have banned the products. The Iowa Board of Pharmacy approved a ban Tuesday. That followed the June suicide of an 18-year-old boy who smoked K2, suffered a severe panic attack, told friends he was "going to hell," then went home and shot himself, according to the Des Moines Register.

What's going on with K2 and similar products, Harden said, is part of a long-running cycle of homegrown or laboratory-created drugs coming to prominence as a legal alternative. They're eventually outlawed. Then another substance comes along and the cycle begins again.

Methamphetamine, the stimulant produced in basement labs now, began the same way in the early 1980s, Harden said.

More recently, it was the hallucinogenic herb salvia divinorum, which the Virginia General Assembly outlawed in 2008.

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's office is having "initial conversations with interested parties about this very issue and looking into what should be done, including possible legislation," said spokesman Brian Gottstein. "We still have more research to do and more people to include in the discussion before we can talk about what we think should be done."

Rose, of the Virginia Poison Control Center in Richmond, has a meeting next week with Del. John O'Bannon, R-Henrico County, who sponsored the bill that banned salvia divinorum.

The meeting is about other matters, Rose said, but after fresh publicity about K2, "this will be on the agenda, too."

Staff writer Amanda Codispoti contributed to this report.