Worcester Fighting to Remove Synthetic Marijuana from City

Friday, August 15, 2014

Nicholas Handy, GoLocalWorcester Contributor

The city of Worcester is fighting to remove synthetic marijuana – also known as K2, K3, and spice – from convenience stores and gas stations throughout the city.

Although the substance is currently illegal in the state, it has still permeated many stores throughout the city and the state and has become a common drug of choice, especially for younger people.

“This substance has been federally banned for two years now,” said Bill Breault, chair of the Main South Alliance for Public Safety. “This is a huge problem in my community, but it is much more than that. This is a Central Massachusetts problem, and even a state and national problem.”

Officials in New Hampshire have reported at least 34 synthetic marijuana overdoses on August 11th and 12th alone. Calls were made to the Worcester Police Department for comment about the synthetic marijuana problem in the city, but were not answered.

A Longtime Battle

Breault says that this battle against synthetic marijuana in Worcester has been happening for a longtime now. Breault recently submitted a petition to the city council to ban synthetic marijuana in all of its forms from the city of Worcester; the third such petition he has filed with city council.

Back in 2012, Breault says the city council unanimously voted in favor of his petition, but the problem still persists in the community because in most cases the drug is just confiscated.

Because synthetic marijuana is a mixture of plant-based material and chemicals that mimic THC, storeowners are able to bring in new batches with a different chemical composition after a previous batch is confiscated.

“I want to see much more than confiscation,” said Breault. “I want to see prosecution. This is a drug that causes a lot of problems for those who take it. After the drug has been confiscated, the store owners just bring in more product, sometimes in a different form with a different chemical composition.”

Health Concerns

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), synthetic marijuana is “a wide variety of herbal mixtures that produce experiences similar to marijuana (cannabis) and that are marketed as ‘safe,’ legal alternatives to that drug.”

While synthetic marijuana offers its users some of the same mind-altering effects that traditional marijuana does – the chemicals used in synthetic marijuana mimic THC – it is also known to cause a variety of damaging side effects including anxiety, vomiting, seizures, erratic behavior, raised blood pressure, hallucinations, and depression and suicidal thoughts.

“One of the reasons that I think that these compounds, probably the most important reason why they are bad, is because we do not know that much about them, particularly what they do in vivo, particularly what they do in humans,” said Dr. Jenny Wiley, a leading expert in behavioral pharmacology. “Many of the compounds that are showing up on the street right now have never been tested on humans.”