Synthetic Pot Use on the Rise

Substance Abuse Counselor David Allison continues to see more and more of his patients use synthetic marijuana.

"I've been seeing a tremendous amount of use of synthetic marijuana," said Allison.  "Kids refer to it as legal.  The kids I work with I say don't call it legal because its not."

But the problem is many kids think it is legal, since it's sold in head shops across the South Plains.  

"Unfortunately it's still available online," said Dr. Fitz from Covenant's Emergency Room.  "You can get it in some convenient stores, but its labeled as a potpourri.  And the way they get around it says it's "not for human consumption.

"It's like gasoline," said Allison.  "You can buy it, but once you hough it, it becomes an illegal act. 

But kids continue to ignore that warning label.

Allison said, "Because you can buy it over the counter they think it can't be bad.  But there's a lot of other unknown chemicals mixed into the mix, producing many of the very, very negative reactions sending a lot of young people and adults too for that matter to the ER.

"We'll se see it more often," said Dr. Fitz.  "They're very agitated and there's no reversal medication its just try to keep them controlled as much as possible by using sedatives." 

Both Dr. Fitz and Allison think they know why more people are switching to these types of drugs like K2 and spice.

"One of the reasons we see it is because its not detected on the lab tests," Said Dr. Fitz.

"We've gotten more sophisticated in our drug testing abilities for things like marijuana and cocaine and other things like that," Allison said.  "And at this point were not really accurate on how to test for these synthetic anabantids because they're all just a little bit different."

Even though it's undetectable, Dr. Fitz warns people to stay away.

"The guy who developed it even says you're an idiot if you smoke it so that goes to show you its bad," said Dr. Fitz.