Rotarians get cold facts on synthetic marijuana

For the past year or two, the Acadia Parish Sheriff’s Office and various other law enforcement agencies in the area, as well as across the country, have had their hands full with synthetic marijuana.

The drug, also known as “legal weed,” is the third-most used drugs by teenagers (behind only alcohol and marijuana).

In a presentation to the Rotary Club of Crowley, Jackie Boddye with the sheriff’s office, explained that the drug’s usage is growing in this area.

“We (law enforcement agencies) are all having issues with synthetic marijuana,” she said.

Synthetic marijuana is thought to be possibly an $8 billion industry. It has more than 140 different types with different names, potencies and effects.

Furthermore, a “high” can constitute a different reaction every time, all of which is making the drug wildly popular and even harder to deal with in the area.

As the illegal narcotic is targeted toward the youth — it’s names and foil packaging alone are doing the advertising, of sorts — Boddye and her department have been focusing on getting the information out to the schools in the parish to help combat the drug problem.

“We’re just hoping we can get it under control before too many kids have to die.”

Adverse effects of synthetic marijuana include:

• Increased heart rate/heart attack

• Increased blood pressure

• Anxiety

• Agitation

• Excessive sweating or very little

• Inability to feel pain

• Seizures

• Inability to speak/slurred speech

• Acute kidney injury and failure

Death is also a possible effect of the drug.

As Boddye explained to the Rotarians Tuesday, the drug does hold some resemblances to marijuana, but is “not marijuana.”

Synthetic marijuana consists of plant material treated with synthetic cannabinoids. The psycho-active substances in synthetic marijuana are designed to bind to and stimulate the same receptors in the brain as THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), the drug responsible for most of marijuana’s psychological effects.

The drug’s popularity sprung up in 2009 and tapered off before ballooning back last year.

Synthetic marijuana, as one might imagine, finds its origins in a lab, but not the lab many might picture.

John William Huffman, a professor emeritus of organic chemistry, was focusing research (funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse) on making a drug to target the endocannabinoid receptors in the body.

But how that research’s molecular compounds became so readily available to the drug abusing community still remains a mystery. In any event, that compound led to the creation of a chemical that drug users and abusers can use to make vegetative matter into synthetic marijuana.

That, coupled with the always-being-tweaked compound, have kept law enforcement on its collective toes.

Still, despite the insanely horrible odds, Boddye and her fellow officers are not ready to call the fight in the War on Drugs.

“You go to work for those few you can save,” she said.