Synthetic Drugs: Collected Posts

Catching up with bath salts and spice.


The Low Down on the New Highs: Not all bath salts are alike.

“You’re 16 hours into your 24-hour shift on the medic unit, and you find yourself responding to an “unknown problem” call.... Walking up to the patient, you note a slender male sitting wide-eyed on the sidewalk. His skin is noticeably flushed and diaphoretic, and he appears extremely tense. You notice slight tremors in his upper body, a clenched jaw and a vacant look in his eyes.... As you begin to apply the blood pressure cuff, the patient begins violently resisting and thrashing about on the sidewalk—still handcuffed. Nothing seems to calm him, and he simultaneously bangs his head on the sidewalk and tries to kick you...” [Go here]


The New Highs: Are Bath Salts Addictive? What we know and don’t know about synthetic speed.

Call bath salts a new trend, if you insist. Do they cause psychosis? Are they “super-LSD?” The truth is, they are a continuation of a 70-year old trend: speed. Lately, we’ve been fretting about the Adderall Generation, but every population cohort has had its own confrontation with the pleasures and perils of speed: Ritalin, ice, Methedrine, crystal meth, IV meth, amphetamine, Dexedrine, Benzedrine… and so it goes. For addicts: Speed kills. Those two words were found all over posters in the Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco, a few years too late to do the residents much good…. [Go here]


“Bath Salts” and Ecstasy Implicated in Kidney Injuries: “A potentially life-threatening situation.”

Earlier this month, state officials became alarmed by a cluster of puzzling health problems that had suddenly popped up in Casper, Wyoming, population 55,000. Three young people had been hospitalized with kidney injuries, and dozens of others were allegedly suffering from vomiting and back pain after smoking or snorting an herbal product sold as “blueberry spice.” The Poison Review reported that the outbreak was presently under investigation by state medical officials.  “At this point we are viewing use of this drug as a potentially life-threatening situation,” said Tracy Murphy, Wyoming state epidemiologist…. [Go here]


The Triumph of Synthetics: Designer stimulants surpass heroin and cocaine.

A troubling report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) shows that amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS) have, for the first time, become more popular around the world than heroin and cocaine. Marijuana remains the most popular illegal drug in the world, and the use of amphetamines has fallen sharply in the U.S., but the world trend represents the worldwide triumph of synthetic drug design over the plant-based “hard drugs” of the past…. [Go here]

Marijuana: The New Generation: What’s in that “Spice” packet?

They first turned up in Europe and the U.K.; those neon-colored foil packets labeled “Spice,” sold in small stores and novelty shops, next to the 2 oz. power drinks and the caffeine pills. Unlike the stimulants known as mephedrone or M-Cat, or the several variations on the formula for MDMA—both of which have also been marketed as Spice and “bath salts”—the bulk of the new products in the Spice line were synthetic versions of cannabis…. [Go here]


An Interview with Pharmacologist David Kroll: On synthetic marijuana, organic medicines, and drugs of the future.

Herewith, a 5-question interview with pharmacologist David Kroll, Ph.D., Professor and Chair of Pharmaceutical Science at North Carolina Central University in Durham, and a well-known blogger in the online science community. A cancer pharmacologist whose field is natural products—he’s currently involved in a project to explore the potential anticancer action of chemicals found in milk thistle and various sorts of fungi—Dr. Kroll received his Ph.D. from the University of Florida, and completed his postdoctoral fellowship in Medical Oncology and Molecular Endocrinology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. He went on to spend the first nine years of his independent research and teaching career at the University of Colorado School of Pharmacy, where he taught all aspects of pharmacology, from central nervous system-active drugs, to anticancer and antiviral medications…. [Go here]


Mephedrone, the New Drug in Town: Bull market for quasi-legal designer highs.

Most people in the United States have never heard of it. Very few have ever tried it. But if Europe is any kind of leading indicator for synthetic drugs (and it is), then America will shortly have a chance to get acquainted with mephedrone, a.k.a. Drone, MCAT, 4-methylmethcathinone (4-MMC), and Meow Meow--the latter nickname presumably in honor of its membership in the cathinone family, making it chemically similar in some ways to amphetamine and ephedrine. But its users often refer to effects more commonly associated with Ecstasy (MDMA), both the good (euphoria, empathy, talkativeness) and the bad (blood pressure spikes, delusions, drastic changes in body temperature)…. [Go here]


Tracking Synthetic Highs: UN office monitors designer drug trade.

Produced by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the Global SMART Update  (PDF) for October provides interim reports of emerging trends in synthetic drug use. The report does not concern itself with cocaine, heroin, marijuana, alcohol, or tobacco. “Unlike plant-based drugs,” says the report, “synthetic drugs are quickly evolving with new designer drugs appearing on the market each year.” The update deals primarily with amphetamine-type stimulants, but also includes newer designer drugs such as mephedrone, atypical synthetics like ketamine, synthetic opioids like fentanyl, and old standbys like LSD…. [Go here]


The New Cannabinoids: Army fears influx of synthetic marijuana.

It’s a common rumor: Spice, as the new synthetic cannabis-like products are usually called, will get you high--but will allow you to pass a drug urinalysis. And for this reason, rumor has it, Spice is becoming very popular in exactly the places it might be least welcomed: Police stations, fire departments—and army bases. What the hell is this stuff? [Go here]

Photo credit: http://gizmodo.com/

photo credit 2: http://www.clemson.edu/

The Triumph of Synthetics

Designer stimulants surpass heroin and cocaine.

A troubling report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) shows that amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS) have, for the first time, become more popular around the world than heroin and cocaine. Marijuana remains the most popular illegal drug in the world, and the use of amphetamines has fallen sharply in the U.S., but the world trend represents the worldwide triumph of synthetic drug design over the plant-based “hard drugs” of the past.

The 2011 Global ATS Assessment estimates that in 2009, some 14 to 57 million people aged 15-64 took an amphetamine-type substance during the year.  The category includes methamphetamine, synthetic stimulants known as bath salts, and Ecstasy. For ecstasy, which is grouped with the ATS family because of its speed-like qualities, “global annual prevalence” stood at only 11-28 million past-year users in 2009, basically unchanged.  Not so for the use of the new synthetic methamphetamines—compounds such as mephedrone, 4-methylmethcathinone (4-MMC) and MDPV, which first took off in the UK, Canada, and New Zealand. In fact, bath salts in the form of mephedrone are competing with ecstasy as the club drug of the moment. (Ecstasy seizures are currently at a 5-year high in the United States, so the window for alternatives is currently wide open.) Meanwhile, recorded worldwide use of heroin, cocaine, and marijuana remained essentially steady from 2005 to 2009.

So what’s behind the global surge in production of amphetamine-type drugs? What advantages do these stimulants hold over time-tested drugs like heroin and coke?  And why is it happening now?

                                                      Emerging Markets

The seismic changes in worldwide drug production begin with geography. Amphetamine-type stimulants are spreading to new regions, and are now being manufactured in places previously off the radar—Iran, Malaysia, and West Africa, for starters. The UNODC report notes that synthetic stimulants “offer criminals a new entry into unexploited and fresh markets.” The locus of activity is no longer the opium fields of Afghanistan, or the coca plantations of Columbia. In absolute numbers, the report claims, “most ATS users live in Southeast Asia, the most populous subregion the world.”

The growing number of methamphetamine pills seized in Southeast Asia is staggering: “The 93.3 million methamphetamine pills seized in 2009 in China, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Myanmar and Thailand represent a three-fold increase in comparison with 2008 figures,” the UN report alleges. “In 2010, total seizures surpassed 133 million pills.” Not since the Japanese amphetamine scourge of the post-World War II years has East Asia seen anything like this.

 The UN report singles out two new countries—Lao People’s Democratic Republic, and Malaysia—as nations reporting, for the first time, “the injecting use of crystalline methamphetamine in 2008 and 2009.” And a massive increase in production has been documented in northern Burma. Voice of America News reports that amphetamine-type drug seizures in Burma went from one million pills in 2008 to a mind-blowing 23 million pills a year later.

A regional representative for the UNODC in East Asia said that the seizures “reflect a dramatic increase in production in the Shan State” in Northern Burma. The production of methamphetamine is a primary source of income for the Shan, whose territory is near the borders of China and Thailand. “What we are worried about,” said the UNODC rep, “is the nexus of drugs, of weapons, of money that is moving around that region at a time when elections are pending and the political situation is quite fragile.” At the same time, Burma remains a major supplier of opiates, though competition with Afghanistan may have helped encourage the production of illegal stimulants. UNODC Executive Director Yury Fedotove explained that the market for synthetic stimulants “has evolved from a cottage-type industry typified by small-scale manufacturing operations to more of a cocaine or heroin-type market with a higher level of integration and organized crime groups involved throughout the production and supply chain.“

                                                    Homegrown vs. Manmade

Amphetamines, in all their synthetic forms, have several production advantages over plant-based addictive drugs like heroin and cocaine. In recent years, the U.S. and other countries have cracked down on amphetamine precursor drugs like ephedrine and pseudoephedrine. Once these tried and true compounds for amphetamine manufacture—found in cold and allergy medications—were registered and controlled, traffickers made the switch to different chemical approaches. New building blocks like phelylacetic acid and l-phenylacetylcarbinol (l-PAC) have been found in labs from Canada to Mexico. Growers of opium and coca have no such alternatives available to them. Pharmacologist David Kroll, Professor and Chair of Pharmaceutical Science at North Carolina Central University in Durham, who has been following the new synthetic drug products on his blog, Terra Sigillata, said that ome of the latest precursors have a problematic history. “Phenylacetate and phelylacetic acid have been investigated in clinical trials for cancer and in the treatment of sickle cell disease,” said Dr. Kroll. “But they didn’t fare well in large clinical trails because they required such high doses, and patients had side effects.”

While this is definitely not a reliable class of compounds from which to fashion new recreational stimulants, Dr. Kroll noted that rendering synthetic drugs illegal can sometimes play havoc with efforts to develop the same drugs for therapeutic purposes. “If these precursors become more strictly regulated, there might be an untoward effect on the prices of other drugs” that use the same compound as a building block, he said.

                                                               New Players

Drug lab seizures in Jordan, Syria, and the United Arab Emirates have also reached new highs—particularly the clandestine manufacture of a form of amphetamine called phenethylline, marketed under the brand name Captagon. Very little in the way of equipment or startup capital is required, which facilitates new players in this market. Captagon, said Dr. Kroll, “makes pretty good sense. The body can metabolize it to amphetamine itself—it’s an amphetamine pro-drug. The other metabolite of the drug is theophylline, the old asthma drug that also acts as a mild stimulant. But it’s potentially as dangerous as amphetamine, depending on how efficient one’s metabolism is.” This is, of course, a huge problem: One bath salts user might have an acceptable drug experience, while another might find that a few whiffs of the same synthetic stimulant will land him or her in the emergency room, with a dangerously elevated heart rate or other complications.

What drug designers, drug manufacturers, and drug suppliers have come to realize is that methamphetamine and other ATS drugs appear to fill the lifestyle void left by the uncertain supply and pricing situation associated with cocaine. Everywhere they land, synthetic stimulants—from biker crank to mephedrone—wreak instant havoc. They simply are not predictable compounds. One bath salts user compared the experience to “a shot of methamphetamine with a PCP chaser." From any kind of rational sociocultural point of view, these are not safe drugs. And it hardly needs repeating that they are highly addictive for many people. The legalization of amphetamine is not a cause likely to gain much momentum any time soon.

Even though the United States has a long history of dealing with amphetamine, this is manifestly not true of every country in the world. And now these untapped markets are fair game for cheaper, longer lasting amphetamine-type stimulants, which “seem to appeal to the needs of today’s societies and have become part of what is perceived to be a modern and dynamic lifestyle,” according to the UNODC report.

We don’t know with complete certainty that the drug data coming out of several key areas—Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Middle East in particular—is accurate. Authorities have captured and dismantled ATS labs in Central and South America as well. In all likelihood, drug production and use in all these regions is underreported. The UNODC document laments that “household and other surveys are lacking or are outdated in some countries in several of the most affected regions.” This is a particular problem in China and India, where no serious national survey of amphetamine-type stimulants has ever been undertaken.

We have a long way to go before we know the outcome of the current craze for synthetic stimulants. The historical wreckage caused by injected methedrine in the 60s and 70s, and smokable ice in the 90s and the aughts, is a grisly matter of public record. Now we are confronted with a baffling cornucopia of designer concoctions whose track record for safe recreation is, thus far, not so good. Amphetamine drugs have sent thousands to their deaths, and countless others to the emergency rooms. And now this deadly deck of stimulants has many more cards in it than it did just a few years ago. Pick a card, any card. First one’s free.

Photo Credit: http://teens.drugabuse.gov/

Methland: Book Review

Cooking crystal in the heart of the Heartland.

It’s summer, and I’ve been catching up on my reading. In an earlier post, I reviewed Joshua Lyon’s memoir of prescription drug addiction, Pill Head. This time, we travel to the opposite end of the spectrum and take a look at Methland, Nick Reding’s journalistic account of crystal meth addiction in the small farming community of Oelwein, Iowa.

This is a tale not far from my heart or home. I was born in Iowa and lived there until I was 21. A few years ago, the small Iowa town where my parents live was rocked by a series of revelations about a local lawyer’s ties to a major methedrine operation. Money had flowed through my parent’s small town in ways never seen before.

Also a few years ago, a Chippewa Indian was bound to a chair in the woods, tortured, and finally murdered in a dispute with meth dealers over some missing money. This happened about 30 miles from my home in rural Minnesota. It happened about an hour’s drive from the birthplace of Bob Dylan. It happened in a place where such things just don’t happen.

In a bleak nutshell, Reding lays out how it went down: During the lifetime of the average Baby Boomer, the amphetamine picture has evolved from the classic long-haul trucker’s Benzedrine and Dexedrine to the tweaker’s bathtub crank and crystal meth. “Not only in Oelwein, but all across Iowa, meth had become one of the leading growth sectors of the economy. No legal industry could, like meth, claim 1,000 percent increases in production and sales in the four years between 1998 and 2002, a period in which corn prices remained flat and beef prices actually fell.” In 2004, law enforcement officials busted a total of 1,370 methamphetamine labs in Iowa.

We learn about Jarvis, an Oelwein meth cook who became a local legend by staying awake on speed for 28 days, or, as Reding puts it, “an entire lunar cycle.” We hear about two-year old Buck, Iowa’s most famous meth baby, whose hair, when tested at the behest of the state Department of Human Services, recorded the highest cell follicle traces of speed ever found in an Iowa child (“At least 7,000 kids were living every day in homes that produce five pounds of toxic waste, which is often just thrown in the kitchen trash, for each pound of usable methamphetamine”). And there is the local doctor, forced to deal with meth addicts while battling his own alcohol and nicotine addictions. The doctor refers to the town’s many bars as “unsupervised outpatient stress-reduction clinics that serve cheap over-the-counter medications with lots of side effects.”

The local prosecuting attorney, we learn, has turned to Kant for solace. “So you can put a tweaker in prison,” he tells the author, “and the whole time he’s in there, he’s thinking of only one thing: how he’s going to get high the day he’s out. He’s not even thinking about it, actually. He’s like, rewired to KNOW that everything in life is about the drug. So you say, ‘What good does prison do?’”

The switch from ephedrine to pseudoephedrine as a main ingredient—an artful end run around loophole-ridden legislation—was the “blockbuster moment in the modern history of the meth epidemic,” Reding writes. “This, really, is the genius of the meth business. Cocaine and heroin are linked to illegal crops—coca and poppies respectively. Meth on the other hand is linked in a one-to-one ratio with fighting the common cold.” Moreover, half of the world’s pseudoephedrine supply is manufactured in China, far from the effective reach of U.S. law enforcement.

Not all of Iowa’s meth is homemade. California is the link between Iowa meth and the Drug War. A DEA officer tells Reding: “Our success with Medellin and Cali essentially set the Mexicans up in business, at a time when they were already cash-rich thanks to the budding meth trade in Southern California.”

The connection between Iowa meth, immigration problems, and the food industry is a bit subtler. Agribusiness consolidation in food packaging and processing—particularly meat packing--led to the demand for cheaper labor, which lead to an influx of south-of-the-border immigrants, legal and illegal, to many of Iowa’s small towns. “The real impetus to walk across the desert: Cargill-Excel in Ottumwa is always hiring,” Reding notes. Narcotics and poverty, says the author, mutually reinforce one another.

Graphics Credit: http://abouttheaddict.wordpress.com/